


The Void is Open

by madsthenerdygirl



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: 1x10 Divergence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempted Sexual Assault, Child Murder, Did I Mention Angst?, Emma Whitmore Gets to Be a Good Person, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Five Stages of Grief, Garcyatt Endgame, Heavy Angst, I forgot to warn for that earlier I'm sorry, It is now, Jessica Logan is a Badass as Usual, M/M, Messy Messy Boys, Multi, Mutual Pining, Nobody Deserves Rufus, Nobody Talks About Feelings Properly, Once It Finally Happens, Our Favorite Idiots Strike Again, Rufus is the Only Straight Person, Slow Burn, So much angst, Suicidal Thoughts, Trash ot3, Wyatt Logan's Bisexuality Crisis, domestic angst, eventual polyamory, everyone is bi, is that a thing?, lots of smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2019-10-30 20:25:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 85,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17835581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsthenerdygirl/pseuds/madsthenerdygirl
Summary: Lucy stares blankly in response, and then it sinks in and she has a moment of hysterical laughter because of course, of course.There’s always one more price she has to pay.





	1. Chapter 1

They’ve lost.

That’s the one thing he thinks, as he and Flynn are forced to their knees. He actually liked fighting beside Flynn, not that he’s got time to think about that. Hating Flynn is so much easier than the weird jumble of whatever the fuck occurs in his brain when he’s around the guy and now of all moments is not the time to be dissecting that.

God knows where Rufus is. Wyatt just hopes the guy gets away, gets to the Lifeboat or, hell, the Mothership, why not. Someone has to keep fighting the good fight now that—

“Kill them,” Rittenhouse orders. “But this one…”

Flynn’s face does something that exactly matches the sick, hateful feeling in Wyatt’s stomach and oh, this, _this_ is hatred. This is pure, cold, poison.

“…have her brought to my bedchambers.”

Wyatt’s eyes are locked on Lucy. He wishes—he wishes he knew what to say. Because for once he can’t tell her that it’ll work out all right.

He can’t promise her that at all.

Flynn’s coiled next to him like a tiger and Wyatt can feel the unspoken _you touch her over my dead body_ , and Wyatt’s feeling the same way but over their dead bodies is very much how this is going to happen, and he’s out of bright ideas on how to change that.

Rittenhouse looks at—at his son.

At this… kid.

“John, my boy. Why don’t I have these men take the lady to my room, and you give the orders?” Rittenhouse suggests, indicating Flynn and Wyatt.

John, the kid, looks a little, well, terrified at the prospect.

Rittenhouse clucks his tongue. “If you’re going to be a leader you need to know how to put down rebellions. Like this one.”

“But we support the American rebellion…”

“We’ll discuss that later.” David Rittenhouse’s voice is cool but sharp, like a blade that’s been left out in the morning frost. “I know you have it in you. When I’m gone from the room, you’re in charge. That means it’s your order. I’m sure you won’t disappoint me.”

No offense but Wyatt really hopes that John does disappoint his father.

Rittenhouse exits the room—and fuck, has two of his men dragging Lucy out with him.

Lucy seems to actually reboot, come online, realize that not just Wyatt and Flynn’s lives are on the line but her own sanity, and starts trying to wrench away, even as she’s dragged off. Wyatt wants to throw up.

“ _Lucy_ —” Flynn blurts the word out like he can’t help himself, and Wyatt’s never heard such helpless fury in his life.

The soldiers close ranks and he can’t see her anymore, and God, God he hopes for some miracle, something, because if he dies at least he’ll see Jess again but what’s going to happen to Lucy—

That’s when Rufus Carlin decides that this is his moment for a daring rescue.

Wyatt gets a hold of a gun. “Get Lucy!” Flynn yells, as if he knows even in his rage that of all of them Wyatt’s the one she’ll probably be the least likely to instinctively knee in the dick.

And, well, he’s far from arguing with that order.

If he gets to put a bullet in David Rittenhouse’s skull while he’s at it, so much the better.

 

* * *

 

The thing she hates the most in this moment is that David Rittenhouse isn’t even being man enough to drag her himself. He’s having one of his soldiers do it while he leads the way. Behind her, she hears gunshots, and a sound she didn’t even know she could make is ripped out of her as she realizes—Wyatt, Flynn—she can’t even picture it.

She doesn’t hate Flynn. She isn’t sure she ever really has. Been annoyed by him, pissed off by him, wanted to smack him, been confused by him and nervous around him, but actively afraid… no, no not really. He has a way of throwing her off her guard but other than that first meeting she’s never actually feared for her safety with him.

And after what he said earlier, with the horses…

That’s ignoring the strange twist in her gut when she looks at him, the other ways that whisper in the dark edges of her mind about how she could really shut him up, knock him sideways, the flashes of a face, and large hands, and a dark curling accented voice that snakes its way into her bed when she touches herself because she’s officially (politely) kicked Noah out of the house.

But still. She doesn’t hate Flynn.

And she certainly doesn’t want him dead.

And Wyatt—Wyatt she wants safe, because she feels safe with him, she feels softness and warmth with him—and now he’s dead and Flynn’s dead they’re dead they’re _dead_ —

She scratches, screams, snarls, but what they don’t tell you is just how much fear takes over, how much the dread sits in your stomach cold and twisting and paralyzing and she feels hopelessly, stupidly weak and she’s kicking and fighting and it’s not enough—

Consciously, she doesn’t recognize the person who appears at the end of the hallway, out of breath, panic in his eyes. She’s too far gone in the fear for that.

But Wyatt was a soldier and right after their first mission, after Flynn first grabbed her and told him _I know for a fact you won’t shoot_ , he took her aside.

“We might be in that kind of situation again,” he said. “And when we are, you need to know what to do instinctively, because the fear’s gonna take over and you won’t be able to do it if you don’t have it in your bones.”

So they’d practiced, with Rufus holding her, with Mason, with Jiya. Practiced until she did it without thinking.

And now she’s being held for real, being dragged for real, there’s bile in her throat and a scream slicing at the inside of her chest and she sees someone at the end of the hallway and sees the gun raise and she hears Wyatt’s voice in her head, _drop._

She goes boneless, and she drops to the floor.

It’s just enough to startle the man carrying her, just enough, and Wyatt gets a clean shot off, fires. Fires again, bullets ringing over her head, bodies dropping to the floor and she thinks one of them was David Rittenhouse and God she hopes it is really fucking hopes it is with all of her heart and she covers her hair with her hands and a sob gets stuck somewhere inside her and she’s shaking and she hates that she’s shaking because God dammit she’s a woman it’s not like she’s never had a guy try to harass her or anything before but this is so much _more_ and she can’t breathe—

Someone grabs her and she rears back, goes to punch them. The person catches her fist in their hand.

“Hey, hey, it’s me. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

“Wyatt?” Rufus comes barreling around the corner. “Flynn’s gone after—oh, shit.”

Wyatt, she knows it’s Wyatt now, wraps his arms around her, rocks her. Wyatt’s alive, he’s _alive_ , and Flynn’s alive, Rufus said, Rufus spoke in the present tense, they’re okay, the boys, her boys are okay—they’re alive they’re okay—she doesn’t have to see their bloody, cold, she doesn’t—she doesn’t have to—she doesn’t—

“Breathe,” Wyatt instructs. “I need you to breathe with me, Lucy, okay? In and out, one two three, in and out, one two three.”

It feels like air doesn’t actually exist anymore, like she’s reaching for something that just isn’t there, but she manages. She manages. Wyatt rubs her back and she matches her breathing with his and the world starts to exist again.

Rufus runs over. “Lucy?”

“I’m okay,” she stutters out. And she knows she is, she’s safe now, but she’s never been less okay in her life. “I’m—I’m okay. They didn’t—they didn’t.”

The bile rises in her throat again. Wyatt pets her hair, makes soothing noises.

“Jesus,” Rufus says. “Right between the eyes.”

Lucy glances over, sees Rittenhouse—wishes she hadn’t looked. Feels a perverse glee that she did. Likes the confirmation that he’s gone. Hates herself for liking it.

Then something else registers. She looks up.

“You said—something about Flynn?”

Rufus’s eyes go wide again. “Fuck. Yeah, the kid—Flynn went after the kid. John Rittenhouse.”

Lucy’s on her feet and moving.

 

* * *

 

John is a kid, he’s nimble and quick, but Flynn’s got longer legs and a hell of a lot more stamina.

It doesn’t take much, is what he’s saying, to corner the kid.

He can’t be more than ten years old. Something deep in Flynn’s chest aches at the sight of him, cowering, terrified, dark hair and dark eyes.

It reminds him terrifyingly of Iris, of what she must have looked like in her final moments.

But Iris was innocent, and this child, this child will grow to be an adult, an adult that will destroy the lives of Flynn and of everyone else who crosses the path of Rittenhouse and God knows what others who dare to get in their way just by being themselves, by trying to make the world a better place.

Lorena would never forgive him for doing this.

Neither, he thinks, will Lucy.

The Lucy he met—that Lucy, she—she said things—but clearly this isn’t the same Lucy. This Lucy already thinks of him as a monster. So really, what’s the difference?

And that’s okay, he tells himself. It’s okay. He didn’t get in this intending to get his family back for himself. So long as they’re alive, he’ll find his own way.

 _For my girls,_ he thinks, and then he does the one thing he knows is going to send him straight to Hell.

He fires.

 

* * *

 

Lucy’s running, she’s running as fast as he can even as her legs tremble and threaten to give out because adrenaline’s a hell of a drug but it can only last for so long.

She sees him, them, the two of them, one a tower and the other a shrunken ball, out in the field. Flynn has his gun pointed, he’s going to—

“ _Flynn!_ ” she screams. He’s not a monster, he’s not, he says he can’t be a father again but he can be, he _can_ be, but not if he does this not if he does this not if he—

Flynn fires.

The curled up body jerks, then slumps.

She screams, wordlessly, because that was a child. That was a _child_.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Wyatt snarls as Flynn turns away. “What the actual fuck, Flynn!”

“Don’t you give me that righteous indignation,” Flynn snaps right back at Wyatt. “Not when this could’ve been stopped if you’d just helped me—”

She ignores them, runs to the body, just on the off chance.

“We could have turned him, changed his mind!”

“Oh, after we killed his father? Sure, he really would’ve listened to us. This was the only way to guarantee—”

“You are sick, you know that? You are sick—”

“Shut up!” Lucy screams, whirling on them. She’s crying, it’s all too much, and for a wild second she hates even being alive because it’s just been one thing after another and she can’t fucking keep up. “Your arguing doesn’t change anything!”

Both men are standing practically chest to chest, glaring at each other, their faces red and fists clenched. There’s a burning hatred in Flynn’s eyes that Lucy thinks for a moment is directed at Wyatt and then realizes—no, she recognizes that hatred. It’s the same one he had in his eyes when he demanded if she thought he slept at night.

It’s self-hatred.

About ten feet away, Rufus is shuffling his feet, as if he’s wondering if he’s really obligated to break these two apart if they go at each other and he really hopes the answer is no.

Wyatt and Flynn both look at her.

“It’s done,” she spits out. “It’s done, all right? We can—we can yell about it later. Let’s just—let’s just go home.”

“Go home,” Wyatt says, as if he can’t quite comprehend the meaning of those words.

“If the Rittenhouse family is dead, then I think we can presume Rittenhouse is dead,” Flynn says slowly. “The movement fizzled out. He’s only barely begun, after all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Wyatt asks.

“It means,” Flynn says, “I’ll take you and Lucy in the Mothership with Anthony, if you want. Rufus can pilot the Lifeboat. It’s safer, the Mothership is the one meant to hold passengers.”

“Um?” Rufus pipes up. “Does anyone think that trusting the time bandit doesn’t sound like a good idea?”

“I’ll take you all back to Mason Industries,” Flynn says, his tone one of forced patience. “There’s no reason for me to lie.”

“Yeah, because you won,” Wyatt grumbles.

Lucy rubs at her forehead. She’s shaking, and her stomach is churning and empty, and she feels like she’s lived for a hundred years, and she just. She wants to go home.

“Let’s go,” she says quietly.

Wyatt and Rufus gape at her. Flynn himself looks a little confused that she’s agreeing so easily. “Let’s _go_?” Wyatt demands.

“Yes!” she snaps. “Let’s. Go. Home. I just… I want to go home.”

Wyatt and Flynn shoot each other guilty looks, and then Wyatt holds out his hand. Flynn makes an aborted movement, like he wants to reach out for her as well, and then realizes he probably shouldn’t.

She feels so heavy, leaning on Wyatt’s arm as Flynn guides them to the Mothership. Anthony’s standing there reading—is that _Poor Richard’s Almanack_?

“Mr. Logan? Miss Preston?” Anthony stands, setting the paper aside.

“Power her up,” Flynn says shortly.

“You’ve looked better,” Anthony comments carefully.

“We all have,” Wyatt snaps, helping Lucy up into the Mothership.

She realizes, belatedly, that she feels numb.

“I hope you’re going to turn yourself in,” Wyatt says to Flynn.

“You know, Wyatt,” Flynn replies, casually, “feel free to get off that high horse any time you feel like it.”

She doesn’t feel claustrophobic as the Mothership door closes.

The walls have already closed in around her.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt glares at Flynn as the Mothership starts up, then pauses. “Did we—are we moving?”

“Yes,” Anthony confirms.

There’s no tell-tale lurch like with the Lifeboat. Flynn smirks at him. “Welcome to first class, soldier.”

Wyatt ignores him. The asshole just shot a kid and he’s making fucking jokes, what kind of…

Flynn’s smirk morphs into a look of abject horror as his eyes flick to the side, and Wyatt can’t help but turn and look.

He’s just in time to see Lucy’s eyes roll back into her head.

“Lucy!” Flynn yells.

“Stop!” Wyatt tries to undo his seatbelt. “Anthony, stop!” He grabs Lucy’s hand as she starts to shake—no, not shake, seize, she’s having a seizure. _Fuck_.

“Get her out of there!” Flynn’s trying to undo his belt as well, his hands shaking, eyes wide.

“We’re here, we’re here,” Anthony tells them, and both of them fly out of their seats, get Lucy onto the floor. Flynn puts two fingers to her neck as Wyatt checks her breathing, makes sure her airway’s clear.

“She’s got a pulse,” Flynn says. He sounds horribly relieved, which is about how Wyatt feels.

“I think she’s just unconscious,” he says. “What—what the hell was that? Huh?”

“That’s never happened before,” Anthony admits. “Not since Stanley Fisher, he traveled on his own timeline…”

“But we weren’t doing that!” Flynn bellows.

Wyatt presses his hand to Lucy’s forehead. No fever.

What the _fuck_ just happened?

 

* * *

 

It’s decided, despite Wyatt’s numerous objections, that Flynn will carry Lucy out of the ship.

Height differences and all that.

He cradles her to his chest as Anthony opens the door and then Wyatt gets out, ready to help him with Lucy if necessary. She feels impossibly small and fragile in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder. Oddly, her hair smells like strawberries.

Through the open door he can see Mason Industries. They’re back in the time machine hangar bay. The last time he was here he had a gun to Anthony’s head and was taking over the place. All for show, of course, but still…

He can still remember putting on that stolen maintenance uniform, looking at himself in the mirror and not recognizing the man he saw, his hands shaking as they clipped the fake I.D. card to his chest.

Now, he fully expects a bunch of Homeland’s best with their guns trained on him, maybe CIA or FBI or, hell, the rest of Delta even. He’s pissed off pretty much every arm of the United States law enforcement and military that exists and probably Interpol and a few others while he’s at it.

Except there’s no one there at all except a bunch of stunned scientists, all gaping at them.

Flynn looks to his right and ah, yes, there’s the Lifeboat, only a little worse for wear, with Rufus climbing out and glancing over to make sure they made it.

“Excuse me?” Connor Mason is watching them all, a redhead next to him looking absolutely fascinated. “Who are—what is going on?”

“Rufus?” A young woman stands up, late twenties, with large dark eyes. This must be the Jiya that Lucy’s journal spoke of. “How—how did you—”

“Connor, it’s okay,” Anthony says. “We’re all on the same side.”

“Same side? Same side of what?” Mason points at the machines behind them. “How did you manage to get not one, but two working prototypes of my plans?”

“Working… prototypes?” Wyatt says slowly as Flynn adjusts Lucy in his arms, holds her a little more tightly as it hits him that nobody in this room knows who he is, or who she is, or who Wyatt is, and the danger they might be in for trespassing on a very top secret scientific laboratory. “You… you don’t recognize these ships?”

“Of course I recognize them!” Mason snaps. “They’re—they’re just still on paper!”

“So you don’t have your own versions,” Wyatt says, again slowly, like he’s working out a math problem.

“Well I would, if I’d had the funding,” Mason says, and that’s when it clicks.

Rittenhouse backed Mason’s funding. Got him in a tight spot, just enough rope to hang himself by. But if there’s no Rittenhouse… then there’s no funding. Mason’s dream doesn’t get that final financial push into reality.

“Okay,” Rufus says, hurrying over. “Well, uh…” He pauses. “Emma?”

The redhead looks at him, raising her eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“Holy _shit_!” Rufus dashes over, hugging her tightly. Emma looks completely thrown by this. “You’re alive!”

“Ah, yes, last time I checked.” She pats him awkwardly on the back. “Was I… not?”

“You—you died on a jump, an early Mothership test, you—” Rufus looks over at Anthony. “You were there.”

“But if there’s no ship, she can’t make that jump,” Anthony says. Flynn’s stomach twists a little. Emma. Emma _Whitmore_. The other pilot Anthony told him about, the one who went into hiding from Rittenhouse and faked her death with Anthony’s help. “So she… couldn’t die that way.”

“Holy shit. Okay, okay, um…” Rufus points at the rest of them. “Mason, Emma, Jiya, everybody, okay, this is Wyatt Logan, he’s with Delta Force. That’s Flynn, he’s, uh…”

“I ra—run a private security firm on the east coast,” Flynn says, just changing the past to present tense in time.

“And the woman he’s holding is Lucy Preston, she’s a history professor at Stanford, and I have no idea why she’s passed out.” Rufus’s brow furrows. “Why is she passed out?”

“We don’t know,” Wyatt says. “She started having a seizure when we jumped.”

“Did you put too many people in the boat?” Mason asks.

“The Mothership can hold up to five,” Flynn says, probably none to gently but he’s had a long day, all right? He’d appreciate it if they could heal the woman he—anyway, so that he can find a hole to crawl into and sink into self-loathing properly. “We only had four. Rufus piloted the Lifeboat back. That holds three.”

“Ah, quick problem,” Jiya says. She’s been typing furiously into some computers. “Master Sergeant Logan?”

“That’s me.”

“Garcia Flynn, NSA asset, formerly of…” Jiya peers at the screen. “Formerly of just about everywhere, apparently.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, that just leaves, uh, Lucy Preston.” Jiya looks up. “There’s no record of her at Stanford.”

“Maybe she works at a different—”

Jiya shakes her head. “Sorry. There’s no record of any Lucy Preston, anywhere. She… doesn’t exist.”

Wyatt’s jaw drops.

And Flynn’s stomach sinks.

 

* * *

 

Lucy’s head is pounding and fuzzy. How many… how many drinks did she have…

“Whoa, sit up slowly.” A woman, crisp, a voice she doesn’t know.

A pair of firm hands help her to sit up. She’s on a couch, in some kind of office. Schematics for the time machine, the Lifeboat or maybe the Mothership, are all over the walls.

“There we go.” In front of her crouches a redheaded woman. She smiles. “Hey. I’ll get you some water.”

“I’m… where am I?”

The woman gets a glass from her desk and brings it over. “You’re at Mason Industries. I’m Emma Whitmore, I’m one of the lead scientists here.” She passes Lucy the water and damn, she’s not sure she’s ever had water or anything taste so good.

Emma sits next to her on the couch. “Can you remember what happened?”

1780\. David Rittenhouse. The—nearly—Flynn shooting—and then pain, like nothing she’d ever known, like her very molecules were rearranging and being torn apart and put back together—

The glass drops out of her hands. “Oh my God.”

Someone stirs next to her and she jumps.

Wyatt’s passed out on the couch as well, his jacket being used as a pillow, still in his 1780s garb.

Emma picks up the dropped glass. Luckily the floor is carpet or it might have shattered. “It’s all right. You’ve been through a lot. Your friend, Flynn, he’s still in meetings. They cleared Master Sergeant Logan for now but they might want to talk to him some more later. Mason’s still with Rufus.”

“Who—who’s they?” Her stomach growls but at the same time if she eats anything she thinks she might throw it back up.

“Homeland Security,” Emma explains. She get up, grabs the pitcher of water, fills the glass, and hands it back to Lucy. “Some woman…”

“Agent Christopher?”

Emma stare at her. “Yes. How did you know that?”

“In my… timeline, I guess, she’s in charge… sorry, why is everyone in meetings? Has Flynn been arrested? Why are you—I’ve never seen you here before.”

Emma sits down and gently takes Lucy’s free hand. “This is going to come as a bit of a shock. I need you to bear with me, okay?”

“…okay?”

Emma gives a small sigh, squeezes her hand. “Miss Preston. I don’t know what you know, but what we know is that two time machines that fit our schematics but are nowhere near being completed have just arrived in our lab, carrying two ex-military men, two of our scientists, and you.”

Lucy’s body goes cold. She forces herself to take another drink of water, nearly chokes on it.

They did it.

Or, rather, Flynn did it.

Rittenhouse is gone.

“The thing is,” Emma continues. “That while, well, we can find Logan and Flynn despite one supposedly in San Diego and the other supposedly across the country, you… we can’t find you.”

Lucy chokes on the water. Coughs. “What—what does that mean?”

Emma gives a small, sad half-smile. “It means that you don’t exist.”

Lucy stares blankly in response, and then it sinks in and she has a moment of hysterical laughter because of course, of course.

There’s always one more price she has to pay.


	2. Chapter 2

Flynn sits carefully in the chair, unable to shake off the wariness that hangs around his shoulders like a weighted cape.

Agent Christopher might not have any beef with him in this timeline but that doesn’t mean he’s going to drop his guard. Ironic, that he should first meet the woman in this way. He’s read about her in Lucy’s journal and knew of her in his own timeline but he’s never actually met her face to face until now.

It’s a bit surreal. But then, this whole situation is surreal.

He did it. He wiped Rittenhouse from the map. Nipped it in the bud.

But now it feels… hollow. Knowing that Lucy, the one person still alive in this world that he cares about, trusted, had hung his faith on, is now paying the ultimate price for it.

“Mr. Flynn.” Christopher nods at him. “You’re a long way from home.”

“I suppose so. You’ve read my official written report.”

“Yes, and I’m curious about the ending section.” Christopher pushes the papers towards him, as if he hadn’t filled them out himself and knew what they said. “You want to see if I can give you an assignment?”

“Yes. That’s correct.”

“I’ve looked you up. You have a wife and a daughter on the east coast. You don’t want to return to them?”

Flynn can’t help but arch an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware this was a therapy session, Agent Christopher. Is this your side job?”

Christopher gives him a deadpan look that suggests she is deeply, deeply unimpressed with him. He’s not surprised. “I’m trying to get all the facts and understand exactly what happened here. And according to your report, along with the reports of the others, the death of your wife and daughter is what started this whole thing. Rittenhouse picked the wrong man to target, you got a copy of the journal from Lucy, and you set the ball rolling.”

Flynn thinks that’s perhaps giving himself too much credit. He wouldn’t have been able to do much without that journal. He’d been close to killing himself when Lucy had found him—the details of that night were bright but blurred at the edges, like Christmas lights, and he doesn’t think he could forget any moment of it even if he wanted to.

Even if, sometimes, in his darker moments, he does want to. Even if sometimes he wishes that Lucy hadn’t come, and she’d just let him rot there, or die there when Rittenhouse or his own hand pulled the trigger.

He sets those thoughts aside—gently, like a worn blanket. He’s not sure what to do with them, still. How to get rid of them or how to embrace them. And they certainly aren’t going to be of use to him now, in this meeting.

“You read my report. You know what I’ve done. What I did. How I ended Rittenhouse and made it so that Lucy no longer exists.” His voice is steady, which is more than he can say for his heart.

Christopher pauses ever so slightly, as though even she, with her ironclad armor, has to take a moment to acknowledge what she’s about to say. “You killed a child.”

“He wasn’t much older than my little girl.”

It’s 2016. Iris died in 2014. She’ll be two years older than he remembers.

Has he been a good father to her in this timeline? Has he still treated her with the playfulness, the gentleness, that she deserves? Please, God, let him have that if nothing else. Let him at least have been a good father to Iris while he could.

“Flynn.” Christopher clasps her hands together and leans forward on the table. “You understand the situation here is… tenuous. I have to know where you’re going to end up. You want to go home to your family, then you’re welcome to. You want to do something else, that’s fine as well. I just have to know.”

He’s already been on the watchlist from the NSA for years. They keep tabs on their assets as well as the less savory characters. Although he supposes he’s one of the less savory characters now.

“I’m not going back.” He’d been honest with Lucy, just… had it only been yesterday afternoon? He told her he couldn’t go back to his family after what he’s done. After the monster he’s become.

Perhaps he’d even been warning her in his own way. Trying to tell her that for all his talk of the two of them being a team, he isn’t the kind of person she really wants to get mixed up with. Not when he’s no longer not so much a person but a jumble of sharp, broken pieces all hastily taped together. A semblance of someone now lost.

No. He can’t expose Lorena and Iris to himself. Especially when he can’t even tell them what he’s gone through without sounding like a complete lunatic. How could he even explain, without taking them on a trip themselves through time?

Christopher looks… a little saddened by that. Just in her eyes, a small flicker. Flynn remembers that Christopher has a wife, and two kids, both of whom by all accounts she loves very much.

“Well.” She leans back in her seat. “I’m happy to recruit you and give you some local assignments. Or farther away ones, if that’s what you’d prefer. Let me know if you change your mind and you want to go home.”

That’s the thing, isn’t it? He doesn’t think that’s home anymore.

On his way out he must be more wrapped up in his thoughts than he’d realized, because he literally smacks into Wyatt, his shoulder connecting with Wyatt’s sternum.

Wyatt stumbles back, wheezes, blinks in surprise. “You okay, man?”

Flynn can practically smell the wariness coming off of Wyatt. He doesn’t know how he feels about the man, anymore. He’d had a sort of odd almost-fondness for him, reading about Wyatt in Lucy’s journal, seeing some dark shadows of his own self in Wyatt’s past, in his loss of Jessica. But after Wyatt had been so stubborn, such a goddamn asshole in D.C., Flynn had been—well, pissed. And then Wyatt had nearly stopped Flynn from saving Gabriel’s life—

Oh, yes. Gabriel. He has a brother now.

In any case, he’d been pissed off by Wyatt, and then they’d actually made a decent team just yesterday, and then Wyatt yelled at him and was a complete asshole all over again on the way home, not that Flynn can really blame Wyatt for it when Flynn has just shot a child, and now…

It seems that Wyatt is just as confused over what to make of Flynn as Flynn is over what to make of Wyatt. He looks oddly concerned about Flynn, but also like he might haul off and punch him, or jump like a rabbit and run for it.

“I’m fine,” Flynn tells him, realizing that Wyatt is waiting for an answer. “Your turn for the debrief?”

Wyatt nods. “Yeah. Gonna find out how my life’s gone to shit this time around.”

Flynn isn’t quite sure where this comes from. Probably from their argument in D.C., and from watching Wyatt run around like a lost puppy, angry and scared by turns. Maybe it’s just trying to give someone advice it’s too late to give himself. But whatever the reason… “Wyatt?”

“Hmm?”

“Do me a favor. This time around, figure out what it is you want.”

Flynn carefully steps around him and walks down the corridor. He can feel Wyatt’s questioning stare after him, but he doesn’t bother looking back.

He has one stop to make, before leaving for good.

 

* * *

 

Rufus is not a guy who’s good with his words.

What? He isn’t. Sure, when you need a quip or a sarcastic comment he’s available but when you want a heartfelt speech he tends to… he falters. His heart leaps up into his throat and strangles him and he can’t even begin to think of what to say.

And so when Jiya comes up to him after his debriefing, he’s fully prepared to just blather like an idiot—but then she wraps her arms around him and kisses him.

“Is this okay?” she whispers, pulling back slightly. “Is this… all right?”

“I… my love—” The endearment slips out before he can stop it, sappy and overdone as it might be, “—of course.”

Jiya’s face lights up. “Say that again.”

“…my love?”

She nods, kisses him. “I thought—maybe in this time, for you, if you don’t… there was an injury, here at the lab. You and Connor and Emma were up late testing and it went wrong and everything was fine, but there was a misunderstanding, we didn’t know how bad it was, when I came and I saw the ambulance and I thought—and I couldn’t handle that and then you were okay and I—I kissed you and you said all these wonderful things and Emma was laughing so hard she started coughing from smoke inhalation and… but I didn’t know…”

Rufus finds his hands settling at her hips, unsure, tentative, until Jiya steps into him and he can wrap his arms around her properly. This is Jiya, his Jiya, isn’t it? Is she another Jiya?

He’s thought about timelines before, especially once they got to D.C. and learned from Flynn of all people about Lucy’s journal, and paradoxes, and loops, and multiverse theory and Infinite Crisis and yet, it never felt like something he had to worry about quite as much as it does now, holding his girlfriend in his arms and wondering if she’s his, or someone else’s, and if he’s taking the place of another Rufus.

“In our timeline we got stranded on a mission,” he admits. “I left a message to you, and you got us back. And you kissed me because—well because if we’d been waiting on me it would’ve taken us another decade to get together if I’m being honest.”

Jiya gives a small huff of laughter at that. “So we’re… we’re good? We’re together?”

“If you want to be.”

Jiya isn’t exactly cuddly. She doesn’t bury her face in his chest, or go all octopus on him. But she is touchy, and she does like him touching her. So she leans in and goes up on her tiptoes, resting their foreheads together. His arms tighten around her instinctively. “Yes,” she whispers. “You’re stuck with me, Flyboy.”

“…did you just make a Star Wars reference?”

“We all make sacrifices for true love, Rufus.”

“A sacrifice!? You call that a sacrifice!? After I had to sit through a film all about _whales_ …”

“Star Trek IV is a _treasure_ and you will _appreciate_ it…”

“Uh, guys.” Emma’s standing in the doorway, an empty coffee mug in hand. “I hate to break up the love fest, here, but you’re in the break room and there’s kind of a line for coffee now.”

Rufus takes Jiya’s hand. “That’s fine. Tell Mason we’re out for the day.”

Emma raises an eyebrow and steps to the side. “Use protection, kids.”

Rufus flips her off as he drags Jiya out the door, but Jiya’s laughing, and squeezing his hand, and that’s worth all the rest.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt has no fucking clue what to expect when he steps into Agent Christopher’s office.

Just a couple of days ago she was his superior officer, his boss, and one that he liked. Lucy’s been over to Christopher’s house, or so she told him, and she said that her family was lovely. Wyatt can’t help but admire Christopher’s firm, cool demeanor, so different from his own, the heat and emotion that he can’t seem to escape no matter how hard he tries to be that, no matter how much he knows a soldier must be that.

Now, though—now Christopher only knows about him through files Jiya has gotten for her. Jiya herself isn’t even pretending to not be wary about these three random strangers who have shown up, two of whom are seemingly very chummy with her boyfriend and the third of which makes said boyfriend jump and glare like a startled cat.

Wyatt can’t exactly blame her.

He’s fully prepared for Christopher to be cold, distant, all business, but knowing is very different from feeling it for himself. He sits down across from her and sees a woman looking at a stranger.

It squeezes at his heart in a way that he didn’t expect.

“Mr. Logan.” Christopher looks at him like he’s a soldier, but not like he’s _her_ soldier, and that makes all the difference. “I’ve read your account of events. It’s very informative and in line with what I’ve read from the other four.”

Four? Oh, right, Anthony. “I’m glad to hear it.” Not that there’s any reason their reports wouldn’t add up. None of them are lying.

“It does make my situation rather awkward,” Christopher goes on. “In this timeline you’re still with Delta and supposedly on a month’s leave before another covert operation. You can imagine the surprise when I phoned your superiors and they learned you were here.”

“Ah, um…”

“Your wife was even more surprised, you’re supposed to be in San Diego—”

He chokes on air, everything stopping, the room spinning and then halting. “My—my wife?”

Christopher looks at him for a moment and then realizes her blunder. “I’m sorry. In your report you mentioned—Wyatt, Jessica is alive. She’s alive and well.”

“You’re—you’re sure?” His voice is a croak.

Christopher nods. “Yes. I called her to verify who you were. She’s glad to know that you’re all right.”

A thousand questions race through his mind but none of them are ones that Christopher can answer. “Uh, ma’am, if you wouldn’t mind telling me what else has… changed?”

How can Jess be alive? Rittenhouse is gone, yes, but could that really have created such a butterfly effect that some random person could choose to not attack her?

Jess was strangled to death. Strangled and… and the police told Wyatt that she was lucky that other things didn’t happen to. _Lucky_. Lucky to _only_ be strangled to death, lucky that further horrible violations didn’t happen, as if the loss of a life wasn’t enough, as if a woman had to get the whole kit and caboodle, lucky? She died and she was _lucky_?

They thought it was a serial killer. Looked for clues, for a pattern, for another beautiful blonde walking late at night who didn’t make it home. They never found anyone. And so Wyatt can’t help but wonder…

“Changed?” Christopher thinks for a moment. “Well, more historical events then you can count, I’m sure. Miss Preston would be best to ask about that, she’s the historian. As for the immediate events and your personal lives, as far as I know your wife’s death is the only difference. Of course, here, there is no Rittenhouse and so no funding for Mason’s project. He does have a time machine planned but not one built. Nobody was willing to invest in it.”

“So we basically just gifted two time machines to him.”

“It would seem so, yes.”

“So… what else do you need from me?”

“If you could stay in the area, ask your wife to possibly come up here for a while, Homeland would like you under surveillance. Along with Flynn, Preston, Carlin, and Bruhl.”

Wyatt’s ready to protest against that, but even as he opens his mouth Christopher cuts him off. “Nobody thinks that you’re actually plotting to assassinate the president, Logan, but we have to cross our t’s.”

Right, of course. To borrow some _Dungeons & Dragons_ lingo, and Wyatt blames Rufus entirely for knowing this, Christopher is lawful good. She’s going to follow the rules and go by the book and believe in them, believe in the system, and if someone in the system is corrupt, then she’s going to work to fix the system, she’s not necessarily going to want to work outside it unless she has to.

Wyatt wishes he had that much faith. He wants rules, he likes rules, he’d give anything for someone to tell him what to do. But lately he’s come to distrust institutions and organizations, the people who tell you who you are and where to go.

“Does this mean I need to stay here?” he asks, because if Jess is alive… if she’s really, really alive, if she’s here…

“At the facility, no. Just stay in the area.”

He jumps up out of his seat, then tries to cover his enthusiasm a little. “Ah, thanks, thank you.”

He needs to check on Rufus, on Lucy—and shove his, ah, feelings for her somewhere dark and contained—he’s not in love with her, per se, but he’s felt something for her since the Alamo, since she calmed him down when his mind was a traitorous whirlwind, and their kiss in front of Bonnie and Clyde, he can’t pretend that he didn’t feel something soft take root inside him then. But feeling protective for someone, wanting to kiss someone, that’s not that same as—he’s spent six years missing Jess, and he needs to see her. He _needs_ to see her. And he needs to figure out why she’s back now, how she’s back, when before she was taken.

Everything else, everyone else, can wait.

 

* * *

 

Lucy sits, and sits, and sits, in Emma’s office.

Emma is perfectly polite about the intruder in her personal space. She’s in and out, ecstatic in a calm, calculating kind of way as Mason and the rest of the team happily inspect their two shiny new time machines.

‘Shiny’ is a bit of a relative term in regards to the Lifeboat, but that doesn’t matter to these scientists.

Lucy’s well acquainted with the pictures on the wall behind Emma’s desk (went to CalTech, graduated top of her class, raised by a single mother apparently, no siblings) when there’s a brisk knock on the door and Jiya pokes her head in.

“Ah, Lucy?”

She stands. “Yes?”

“You’ll want to come with me. I’ve found something.”

Lucy dutifully follows Jiya to the conference room, the one overlooking the hanger bay where two time machines now sit, the conference room where once Jiya told her how she lost her sister Amy, how she had a different father, how her mother lied.

There’s a computer open on the table. Jiya sits, and gestures for Lucy to do so as well. Lucy stands instead, the better to peer over Jiya’s shoulder.

“In your report, you listed all the family members that you can remember on both sides of your family.”

“Yes. But I don’t know a lot about my biological father—just my legal one. My adoptive one, apparently.” She can’t quite keep the bitterness out of her voice. She has tried, oh, has she tried to keep from being angry with her mother about this. But it’s hard. In her own timeline, the original timeline that seems so far away, that seemed to belong to a different Lucy altogether, her mother was dying. Would Carol really have been happy to take that secret to the grave? To never tell Lucy the truth about how she came into the world?

“That’s okay.” Jiya pulled up some results. “I was able to find both your legal and your biological father.”

She points at the screen. Sure enough, a Benjamin Cahill is a local politician in the Tri State area, and Henry Wallace died three years ago from lung cancer, same as in Lucy’s timeline. Her original timeline. He doesn’t appear to have married the woman who is descended from the Hindenburg survivor, but then if Rittenhouse disappearing changed so much, maybe he met someone else. _A butterfly flaps its wings…_

“And… Carol Preston?”

“That’s the thing. You told me your great-grandfather was a Nicholas Keynes, right?”

“Yes.”

“And before that was a Martin Keynes.”

“Yes.”

“Right, here’s the thing.” Jiya pulls up another window. “I can find your great-grandmother, but she didn’t marry a Nicholas Keynes. In fact I can’t find the Keynes family. I can find a few random family members you told me about but the direct family line, just doesn’t exist.”

How could her whole family not exist? “I… I don’t understand.”

A small sigh escapes Jiya. “So, this might be a reach. But. This Rittenhouse group, it said in your report that they’ve been quietly recruiting people and power since around 1780, right? And Flynn was the one going back through time and killing people and rearranging things, and each time you came back your family still existed. So if every time you and Flynn changed something and you still came back to your family there, it was whatever you guys did this time that made it so your family doesn’t exist. And I mean, your entire family line, Lucy. I’ve gone back five generations, we’re into the mid-1800s here and your family’s still gone? That’s not the case with any other family you’ve had me research for your report of history. Rittenhouse vanishing has changed a lot according to you but not such a big chain reaction. So that means…”

Jiya keeps talking, trying to explain it, but a horrible suspicion is growing, taking over, and Lucy can’t hear the other woman anymore.

Cahill had been Rittenhouse. But Carol never satisfactorily explained how she knew him, not really, or why she’d come to have an affair with him…

“Lucy?” Jiya’s voice is muffled and far away. The room’s indistinct, fuzzy…

It can’t be, but… but it has to be. She knows, intellectually, that yes there are probably other people who were affected by David Rittenhouse and his ilk never moving on their plans. History has changed and that means people’s connections have changed too. But in her heart, in her gut, she knows—this is the truth.

Flynn shot John Rittenhouse.

And snuffed out her family.

“Lucy!” Jiya’s face comes into sharp focus as she shakes her slightly. The floor feels like it’s pitching. “Uh, Emma?”

Emma, who is walking by, pauses. She takes in Lucy’s undoubtedly pale greenish face and nods sharply, turning on her heel and heading back the way she came.

Jiya guides her into a seat as Emma returns with a cup of water. “We have to stop meeting like this,” she says, half dry humor, half soft tease, as she passes the water over.

Lucy nods. Words are a little difficult.

Her mother is—was—Rittenhouse. Maybe not literally, but biologically. But that would explain so much if she was, it would explain the affair, explain Cahill, why…

Amy.

The water cup falls out of her hand and Emma just manages to catch it. “Whoa, okay, do I need to get a doctor?”

“Lucy?”

She grasps the locket around her neck so tightly she can feel it digging into her palm. “My sister,” she whispers. “Amy. She’s—I’m—”

She will never get her sister back. Never. Amy’s gone. Her mother is gone, her whole family is gone, she’s a ghost.

“I—”

Lucy looks up to see Flynn frozen in the doorway.

He looks rather horrified and completely caught off guard, as though he walked into a grocery store expecting to grab some peanut butter only to find that there is a Satanic ritual being conducted in the middle of the produce aisle. Emma stands in such a manner that puts herself between Lucy and Flynn, and while Lucy isn’t sure what to make of this previously-unknown member of Mason’s team, she’s grateful for the instinctive female solidarity.

“It’s all right,” she says, her voice soft and cracking in her throat.

“I just wanted to, ah, say goodbye,” Flynn manages. He looks caught on a spike, brutally pinned to the spot.

Jiya closes her computer lid and ushers Emma out. Emma doesn’t look too pleased with this situation and the look she gives Flynn speaks volumes about what she will do to him if she finds out he made any sort of unwanted advance upon Lucy’s person while alone, even if that advance was only an emotional one.

Flynn takes a step inward, then flinches, like he’s been struck. “I’m guessing you’ve figured out how you don’t exist in this timeline.”

She nods. Her thumb rubs up and down the engraved face of the locket. “I think I’m descended from—from Rittenhouse. From John.” She takes a deep breath. Saying it out loud makes it real but she can’t flinch from this now, this last bitter pill. The longer you leave it in the mouth the worse it gets. Just swallow, drink some water to drown it, move on.

Don’t think about it festering in your stomach.

“Jiya can’t find any trace of my mother’s side of the family. Something about the factors, how they work…” She looks him in the eye. It takes more strength than she thought. “All I can think is I’ll never get my sister back.”

A look of fleeting—something, something dark and raw and ragged—crosses Flynn’s face and then he crosses to her in a flash, kneeling like a supplicant, but not daring to touch. “Lucy, Lucy I’m— _žao mi je_ , Lucy, I didn’t mean…”

“I know you didn’t.” She cannot agree with what he did, but neither, she finds, can she wholly condemn it. Knowing how much he lost, and how angry and broken he was, is, knowing that in that moment he probably thought she was being… what he did is unforgiveable and yet she doesn’t have to forgive it because she isn’t condemning it, she’s on the edge and still doesn’t know which way to fall.

Flynn looks down. “ _Bilo tko osim tebe_.” It’s a murmur, not one she’s sure he meant to say out loud.

He looks back up at her, wets his lips, stares at her for a long moment, and then manages through hoarse tones, “What can I do?”

What can he do? What can anyone do?

Wyatt, she’s heard, has Jessica back. She’s happy for him, really she is. There is a softness inside her when she looks at him, when he touches her, a softness that makes her blush and makes her feel guilty all at once because he’s still grieving so strongly, a tangible shadow. But whatever she might be starting to feel for him, it’s second to knowing that Wyatt’s getting what he wants, what he’s been aching for.

Rufus has Jiya. She’s seen them interacting and she’s glad they’re still together in this timeline. He has his brother, and his mother. Nobody else knows her. She and Anthony have never even spoken.

There’s no one. And she is so very terrified of being alone.

Maybe it’s reckless, to ask the man who was on the opposite side of their war, the general of the opposing army, to play house with her, but… who else is there?

“Did you mean it?” she asks. “When you said you wouldn’t go back to your family?”

Flynn nods.

“Are they alive?”

He nods again.

That’s… that’s good. She’s glad of that. She’s glad someone got what they wanted out of this. Even if it feels like everyone got what they wanted except for her.

“Do you know what you’ll do?”

“No. Agent Christopher asked that I stay in the area. They want to keep an eye on us for a little while.”

Of course. “Then you… you need a place to stay.”

Flynn blinks a few times. “Lucy…”

“Wyatt’s going to get Jess, Rufus is going home, I… I need… I can’t…” _I can’t be alone._ She’s scared of what she’ll do if she’s alone.

Flynn’s hand comes up, spasms, drops back down. He is still on his knees, his head is still bowed, and she wonders if this is how priests feel in confession. _Say five Hail Marys and babysit the woman you hurt and your sins will be cleansed._

“Of course,” Flynn tells her, and she wonders how a man who tossed her aside at the Ford Theatre like a rag doll, who shot Lincoln, and bargained with Nazis, and destroyed the Alamo, can now be so gentle.

But then, she’s seen Wyatt in action as well. War, she thinks. It makes murderers of everyone in time. Perhaps it would even have gotten her.

“Of course,” Flynn repeats, and she wonders how, with two words, he has managed to make her feel as though she is being carefully picked up and cradled and carried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> žao mi je = I’m so sorry  
> Bilo tko osim tebe = anyone but you


	3. Chapter 3

Wyatt steels himself as he walks up to the apartment. He’s got no idea what he’s in for, no idea what kind of mood Jess’ll be in, or what their life’s been like together, if she’s still in the same profession, hell, if he’s even still in the same profession…

He raises his hand to knock on the door only for it to fly open and for Jess to punch him in the face.

Ow. Well then.

“You got some nerve coming back here.” Jess sounds like a raging rattlesnake. “I’ve half a mind to close the door on your face.”

“Jesus fucking…” His nose burns like a bitch. Not broken, but that’s definitely blood coming out of it. “Seriously?”

“My lawyer told me to just serve you the papers and control my temper but, y’know, that felt really necessary.” Jess is shaking out her hand but not wincing, and Wyatt’s reminded that this is far from the last time she’s punched someone out.

He rubs his forehead. “Could I at least come in and get some ice while you serve me these papers?”

Jess opens the door, letting him walk in, but gives it what sounds like a very satisfying slam behind him once he’s gotten inside.

Wyatt’s breath, his lungs, everything seem to collapse as he looks around and realizes—this is his apartment. His apartment, his and Jess’s, the one he had… before she died, and then he—he gave it all up, moved—started taking on dangerous jobs, suicidal jobs.

He hasn’t been back here in years. But here it all is. The pictures from their wedding up on the walls, Jess’s B.A. in Journalism hanging over next to the Van Gogh print she loved—loves—so much, the afghan her mom knitted as a housewarming present is draped over the gigantic cushy leather couch that they’d gotten from Dave… all the little things that Wyatt gave away or put in a storage unit, they’re all here. This is his home. His home with Jess.

“Look, I’m sorry about—whatever it was—”

Jess scoffs. “Whatever it was? Wyatt, you turn up in San Francisco of all places, in Silicon fucking Valley, without a word? But you insist that no, couples’ counseling was a waste of time. Sure. Right.”

She does get him a bag of frozen peas from the freezer, though, and passes them to him. Wyatt presses them to his nose, wincing.

“I’m… I’m going to sound really stupid, right now,” he says, scrambling. “But… when did we start couples’ counseling?”

Jess threatened him with it a few times but they’d never actually gone. He hasn’t—he’d been scared to go. Scared that the therapist would take one look at him and tell Jess _this guy’s a loser, he’s pathetic, don’t even waste your time_.

It seemed here that he’d given in.

Jess sighs, leaning back against the kitchen counter. “After the… the Pelican Lounge.” She snorts. “I could tell you you’re an ass for not remembering but it was so many goddamn instances… you got jealous of a guy I was talking to. It was Nathan, I dated him for like a month while I was out on assignment and you were in Kuwait.”

Ah, yeah, it’s coming back to him now. Jess was—is—an investigative reporter, so he’d thought… hey, she was always off somewhere, why did it matter if he was always off somewhere? Right?

Apparently, that mattered to Jess, and they’d been ‘off’ and ‘on’ for years before Wyatt popped the question.

“We argued on the way home,” Jess goes on. “I got out of the car, made you drop me off, and I walked for about… fifteen minutes, I think, before you came back. Told me to get in the car, I shouldn’t be walking out alone at night.”

Wyatt’s throat constricts. Yeah, that’d been exactly what he was thinking that night. _Get in the car, Jess, I’m—I know you can defend yourself, I’m just worried, okay? I’ll go to counseling, whatever you want, just, please._

“You sounded so sincere.” Jess’s voice is a whisper. “I believed you. But then… we got to counseling and you’d just clam up. You refused to cooperate. I felt like such an idiot, for trusting you.”

Wyatt doesn’t even know where to begin. The fact that he’s fucked it up with Jess even further, the fact that she’s here, alive, the fact that he’d made her feel like an idiot… or the fact that she hadn’t died at all.

But—but what could have possibly stopped her from dying? The police said her death had all the markings of a serial killer.

Did—did the lack of Rittenhouse somehow mean that serial killer didn’t exist? But how did that add up? Butterfly effect, maybe, but…

_Occam’s razor._

Rufus had been rambling about it one night at the bar, when the three of them had been chatting. “Occam’s razor is the idea that the simplest solution to a problem is usually the correct one.”

“That’s like the opposite of ‘if it sounds too good to be true, it is,’” Wyatt had replied.

“That’s when you’re dealing with people,” Rufus had laughed. “I’m talking about math, here.”

Occam’s razor: the simplest solution.

If Jess is alive now that Rittenhouse was gone, that means that Rittenhouse was responsible for her death.

A wave of dizziness and nausea washes over him. Jess goes from quiet to startled, her eyes widening. “Wyatt!”

She catches him as he starts to fall and helps him to sit down at the kitchen table. “Jesus Christ, you okay? I didn’t hit you that hard.”

“No, no, I’m sorry, it’s, uh, this last job I was one was rough. Sorry.” He looks up at her. God, she’s so real, real and touchable, physical, here. “Hey, Jess, can I ask you a question?”

Jess nods, walking over to pour two glasses of water. “Sure. Why not.”

“Um, four years ago, right before that whole argument, at the Pelican, did… did you do a project of any kind looking into… I don’t know, Mason Industries? Or corrupt congressmen?”

“Yeah, actually. I thought you didn’t care about any of that shit.” Jess passes him a glass of water and begins drinking her own. “I did a piece on the connection between D.C. and Silicon Valley. Focused on Elon Musk and all of his bullshit, why?”

Wyatt feels cold all over. So—so Jess was just like Flynn. She’d been looking into Mason Industries, into Mason’s ties with these congressmen, Rittenhouse congressmen, Wyatt’s willing to bet the damn farm on it, and Rittenhouse decided her Delta husband didn’t know anything, or that it was too much trouble to get rid of him, the homegrown Texas boy, but clearly not the Croatian foreigner, oh no, _him_ , him they had no problem getting rid of, him and his wife and his little girl—they shot up two innocent people and then strangled a woman until she turned blue—

“Wyatt?”

He realizes that Jess is peering at him, looking concerned. “Everything okay?”

Wyatt considers lying to her—but he’s hiding enough from her already. Even if it’s for her own sake.

He shakes his head. “Just… my recent job, up in there, it reminded me of that article, that’s all.”

Jess nods, and awkward silence falls.

He wants to tell her. He should tell her, shouldn’t he? She’s owed the truth, right? That he’s been time traveling, that he’s from a timeline where she died, she’d been—been strangled, tossed aside like some kind of object, a rag doll, that he’s—that he’s been ready to do anything, absolutely anything to get her back—

_Lucy says it right here: Wyatt is obsessed with Jessica. He needs to learn to move on._

He swallows, his throat tight and dry. What if Flynn’s right? What if Lucy, the Lucy from the journal, is right?

What if he has to move on?

Or, more than that—Jess is here. Alive. Hoping to serve him divorce papers. Hoping to live a life without him.

He’s made fuck-all of his life without her, but. But the last thing he’d thought, as he’d driven to try and find her, was that she deserved better than him.

Maybe now—life is giving him the chance to do that, when he hadn’t before.

“Jess, I…”

“If you’re going to ask me to give you one last chance, Wyatt, please…”

“No, I was…” He stands up and holds out his hand. “I was going to ask if I could, uh, sign those papers. And. And I’m sorry.”

Jess stares at him like he’d grown a second head. “You’re… sorry?”

He nods. “I know I’m not exactly good at that but. Yeah.”

Jess narrows her eyes. “You’re not going to apologize and then ask for another chance.”

“No. No, you… you want this, and I’m guessing that I’ve been refusing to give this to you for… years.”

The corner of Jess’s mouth quirks up. He found that so damn endearing. Still does, but it doesn’t make his stomach hot and tight the way it used to. “Just the one year.”

“Yeah, well. Too long, is the point. I don’t think I’ve ever given you what you wanted or ever really listened to you, not without a fight.”

“Not really.” Jess slides him the papers and grabs a pen. “I honestly was expecting a lot of begging about how you were a changed man, and how you’d do things differently…”

“Yeah, well. My last mission, I got smacked around a little. I—I missed you. A lot. I was all convinced that—that I’d do anything to see you again. It felt like—like years since I’d seen you, y’know? But, um, there were two people with me on this mission that pointed out… that my whole life was about the missions, and about you. And not in a healthy way. And so I—I figured it was time I gave you what you want. I’ve lived life without you, anyway, really, just going out on Delta stuff and then expecting you to be there when I got home but not doing the same for you when you’re chasing down a lead. Like you’re some… some prize. And I never wanted it to—to be that way with you.”

He can’t stare into at her elf eyes anymore and looks down, swallowing hard. “When—when you—when you took care of my dad for me, and you—you told me that I didn’t have to hide anymore, I made a promise to you, that I’d always be there for you. And at some point along the way I stopped doing that and I made it about me. It’s time I started making good on that promise.”

Jess braces her hands on the table and looks at him sadly, tilting her head. “You know you don’t owe me for that. You never have.”

“I know.”

She stares at him for a moment more, then nods, sitting down. “My lawyer said she could be here while we sorted out personal possessions but I—I figure we could—um. I could order some pizza? We could… talk about how we want to handle this?”

Wyatt takes the pen and gives in. Does it. Signs on the dotted line. “Yeah. We can figure it out ourselves.”

Jess smiles at him, and Wyatt… Wyatt tries to feel okay with it.

 

* * *

 

Flynn doesn’t know what to do.

He does what Lucy tells him—he moves in with her, not that he knows how this is going to work. She doesn’t have an apartment, or personal items. Neither does it. Everything’s all back at his house. His former home. Maria’s sketches and designs, the book of poetry he inherited from her. His father’s watercolors. All of the little drawings that Iris did that were stuck to the fridge. His wedding photos to Lorena.

The apartment is very bare, to start up with. Mason buys it for them. Denise offers, but Lucy doesn’t want Denise sticking her neck out for them more than she already is. And she certainly doesn’t want to be beholden to the United States government.

Flynn understands.

Mason, though—he feels guilt. He’s not the reckless genius caught up in his hubris that Flynn remembers. He’s apparently been monologuing and delivering rambling Shakespeare monologues while half-drunk, if you ask Rufus, who’s had his hands full on babysitting duty.

Flynn is more than willing to take advantage. The man took Rittenhouse’s money without asking questions, pushed scientists to risk themselves without considering the consequences of any of it. If he wants to buy Flynn and Lucy a really nice apartment, then by all means.

And it is a nice apartment. It’s a two-bedroom, gorgeous renovated top half of an old Victorian house near the Mission and Financial districts. The bottom half is another apartment—Flynn hasn’t met their downstairs neighbors, and he doesn’t care if he never does.

He’s not exactly looking to make friends.

“We should go… shopping,” he says, staring around at the literally bare apartment. “Get you some nice furniture.”

Mason offered to have a professional designer do it up, any designer they wanted. Flynn and Lucy politely declined, so Mason passed them a credit card instead and told them not to waste it all on IKEA.

What’s wrong with IKEA, Flynn would like to know.

“I don’t know.” Lucy hugs her arms around herself. She does that when she’s feeling vulnerable, Flynn’s noticed.

“C’mon. It’ll be fun. Get you out of the house.”

He knows she cries herself to sleep at night. He knows she probably needs someone to hold her. Someone to cling to.

He can’t be that person. He never goes to her. He can’t—he can’t do that for her. No matter what the journal says.

But this, he can do. Helping her to pick out the perfect sofa. Playfully argue with her over paint colors for six hours at the hardware store. Build her a bookshelf. This, yes, he can do this. This is worthy penance, without overstepping, without asking for more than he deserves to receive.

Denise is being stingy on assignments for him. She wants him to keep a low profile, and Flynn can’t blame her. Part of him wanted to run as far away as he could, have Denise give him assignments in Gibraltar or Thailand. Anywhere he could be away from those he’d hurt. Lucy especially.

Every time he went to pick up the phone, though, he’d see Lucy coming out to get her morning coffee, her eyes puffy and with dark smudges under them. Or he’d find her pouring over a history book and rubbing at her forehead like it was giving her physical pain. Or she would be quietly, carefully asking him what he thought about a particular fabric sample for the curtains.

He couldn’t let himself get close to her. But neither could he leave her, when she so plainly needed someone. When she had no one.

Instead, he asked Mason if the guy needed an extra hire for security at Mason Industries.

Mason looked up Flynn’s records, saw he used to run a security firm, and promptly put him in charge.

Honestly, the last guy seemed relieved to be demoted. Flynn isn’t surprised. He kind of assumed that working for Mason and having any kind of leadership role underneath the guy couldn’t be easy.

So now he gets up every day, and goes to work at Mason Industries, and tries to buy Lucy something on the way home like a book or a flower or some ice cream, and he really has no fucking clue what to do. He doesn’t even know what he’s doing now.

“Working hard?” the redhead, Emma, says as Flynn stares down at the hangar bay where there are now two fully-functioning time machines, well ahead of schedule. “Or hardly working?”

“Dr. Whitmore.” Flynn looks at her. Emma’s all sharp angles in a way that’s very much like and very unlike Lucy at the same time. “Thank you, for, ah, for helping Lucy.”

“How is she?” Emma’s looking him up and down, her gaze like a steel blade. Sizing him up.

“She’s… managing.”

“Mason wants to look more into her case,” Emma says. “A woman entirely erased from history. It’s fascinating. And her locket, it has a portrait of her sister in it, doesn’t it? Carried over from one timeline to another.”

“Lucy’s not a scientific experiment,” Flynn says, and he only realizes afterwards that he snarled the words.

Emma arches an eyebrow and looks away. “No, she’s not. I told Mason that it wasn’t a good idea.”

Flynn cuts his gaze over to her. There’s something about Emma that reminds him of himself, but it’s the same thing that makes him wary of her. “What do you think we should do with her, then?”

“I think you should give her my number and tell her to come by for lunch,” Emma says. Her hands land on the balcony railing. They grip tightly, Flynn notes. “I know what it’s like, to be alone and have no one. And she needs friends.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“Emma?” It’s Mason, yelling from down below. “What the actual hell is this?”

He’s waving some piece of equipment. Emma chuckles. “I’d better go humor the eccentric genius. Good talk, Flynn.”

She walks past him, just in time for Flynn to see Rufus leave his desk.

Ah. The person he wanted to see.

Rufus jumps a little as Flynn walks up to him at the water cooler. Yes, even hi-tech fancy time machine building labs run by British billionaires have water coolers. “Hey, Flynn, man, hey, what are you, uh, are you even supposed to be here?”

“I’m not a criminal in this timeline, Rufus, in fact I’m the opposite of a criminal.”

Rufus seems hardly reassured by this, or by the accompanying smile that Flynn gives. It is a bit of a sarcastic smirk though, so, Flynn doesn’t blame him. “Right. I assume you’re like the creepy uncle in every timeline, though?”

“I’m touched. Truly.” Flynn clears his throat, the smirk sliding away. “Actually though I did… want to say something to you, quickly. It’s… it’s probably not anything that will matter to you, but in case it did I… you were never my enemy. Lucy spoke highly of you, in her journal, and you lived up to my expectations. When I stranded you all, I intended to come back in a few days, see if you were open to joining me now, but you—you found a way to get yourselves back to the present. It was ingenious.”

Rufus is staring at him like Flynn has admitted his greatest dream in life is to be a ballerina. “Ah. Thanks?”

“My point is that I was sorry I had to go against you, and that I almost got you shot a few times. I’m sorry that we had to be enemies.”

Rufus shrugs and takes a sip from his water. “You were a dick but you weren’t as big of a dick as you could’ve been. I mean—you could’ve told Lucy and Wyatt that I was spying for Rittenhouse or done all kinds of things to fuck me up with that.”

Ah. Yes. Flynn shrugged. “In the journal it said that your family was put in danger. I can understand the things a man will do for his family. You didn’t know Wyatt and Lucy all that well at first. Why would you put them ahead of your mother and your brother? I knew… the truth would come out eventually. It did in the journal, anyway.”

Rufus throws away the disposable cup, then nods. “Yeah. For what it’s worth, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Rufus starts to walk away, pauses, opens his mouth like he might say something more, then keeps walking.

Flynn goes back up to the security station to check on the camera feeds and make sure Briggs hasn’t fallen asleep again.

He’s halfway there when he hears, “Flynn!”

He turns around to find Rufus jogging up to him, looking out of breath. “Wow, you walk quickly.”

“So I’ve been told. Usually by people shorter than you.”

“Thanks, point out how I need to work on my cardio, you really know how to make a guy feel good.” Rufus takes a second to catch his breath. “Look, uh, Emma suggested that you might need… friends. So if you want, us science nerds like to go out to this one bar after work. If you want to join.”

The thing is, Flynn once had friends. Quite a few of them. And he would go out to bars with them, and have regular poker nights, they’d watch the World Cup together every year. He’d actually been… well he’d never say popular, no, but he’d been considered a guy worthy of hanging out with. Someone that other people cared to include.

He doesn’t want to be included now out of pity.

“I’m all right, I wouldn’t want to intrude. But thanks.”

He gives Rufus what he hopes is a polite smile, not an acidic one, and turns and walks away.

Rufus doesn’t follow him.

 

* * *

 

Flynn’s been doing most of the heavy work on putting their lives back together. Or on giving them a life in the first place. Lucy would, should, feel worse about that. About letting him bring her home little gifts and spending all this time putting bookshelves together for her and going out to his job while she says at home and, well, reads.

But she has to know. She has to understand.

She reads book after book about history, all over the world, seeing the layers upon layers of ripple effect. And some things are good. Charles Lindbergh isn’t a Nazi sympathizer, and his child is never kidnapped. Lucy’s not sure what that has to do with Rittenhouse, but it makes her glad to know that a talented man was able to also be a moral one, and that one child, at least, is saved in place of the one who was murdered.

Other things… are not so good.

The Revolutionary War was more hard-won. Seems Rittenhouse decided that helping the Founding Fathers in seceding was the perfect opportunity for him to carve this new country in his own image, in a way that he couldn’t in the well-established England. Without his continued help and his spreading network, Washington struggles—but perseveres.

The USSR is stronger. America loses the Space Race. Kennedy isn’t assassinated. Good and bad, good and bad, consequences upon consequences. Lucy feels ill. History is all the same, it’s all what she knows, right up until the Revolutionary War. Then some of it stays the same, in places other than America, mostly little things change, and then like a snowball it picks up and rolls and rolls and rolls until she can’t even recognize half of what she’s reading about World War II.

She shoves the history book aside and buries her face in her knees.

Times like these she wishes she could call Amy. Or her mom.

 _Mom_. Well and whole and alive. Another person she never got to say goodbye to.

Well, at least she doesn’t have a random fiancé she doesn’t remember who is living with her and expecting things from her that she can’t give.

How could something that caused so much harm also have been the cause of good?

A glance at the clock tells her that Flynn won’t be home for another hour. Well. She has a car. She can go wherever she likes. She’s not sure where that is, she just knows she can’t be in this apartment, clogged in all this history, a second longer.

She drives mindlessly. Where is she going? That’s a hell of a question. Who the fuck knows, not her. It’s all just a blur, and she feels like she’s going into a tailspin, feels like she’s drowning, like it’s her accident all over again—and then she realizes she recognizes the neighborhood.

Accidentally, somehow, she’s driven to Denise’s house.

Lucy parks the car, prays that she’s not dropping by at a bad time, and knocks on the door.

It’s opened not by Denise, or even Michelle, but by one of their teens. Lucy’s only briefly met them.

“Ah, hi.” She is acutely aware that she’s dressed in her flannel pajama bottoms and a _Stay Shiny_ shirt that Jiya leant her. Lucy has no idea what the shirt is referencing. She thinks it might be fairies. “You’re Mark, right? Is your mom home? Denise?”

Mark, who is tall and lanky and looking at her with a great deal of suspicion, nods, and then yells back over his shoulder, “Mom! You’ve got a friend here!”

Denise, thank goodness, doesn’t comment on Lucy’s state of dress. She just gets her a cup of tea and sits her down in the living room.

Lucy’s been here before. She’s seen the décor, the dark blues and greens that Michelle favors with the dark stained wood coffee table where a half-finished Monopoly game is sitting, all before, when she was last here—just a few days before they went to the Revolutionary War, just a few days before—

She can’t seem to see the décor now. Can’t seem to take anything in. She can’t seem to even see her hands in front of her.

“Lucy.” Something warm is pressed into her hands. It’s a mug, and it smells strong and sweet. “Drink up.”

Mom hates—hated—tea, so she always made hot coco instead, but the drink itself doesn’t matter. It’s the warmth of it and the care behind it, and Lucy bursts into tears so strong that her whole body shakes and the mug is immediately taken away again so she doesn’t spill any of it on her hands.

“Well.” That’s not Denise, that’s Michelle. “Mind if I touch you?”

Lucy shakes her head. It’s been weeks since she’s been touched. The brief brushes of Flynn’s fingers against hers when they pass each other a book don’t count, not really, they do nothing to sate the hunger inside of her. And she knows Flynn’s just trying to be respectful, to take care with her space, but she’s only human and she’s falling to pieces and needs someone to hold her together while the glue sets, while she takes the shattered shards and finds a way to make them into a person again.

Warm arms surround her, nothing at all like Mom’s, but it’s enough, it’s enough, and Lucy cries for the first time in what feels like years.

 

* * *

 

“It’s not pity,” Jiya says.

Flynn looks up.

He’s just sorting the papers and reports for the day—one benefit to being a time-traveling terrorist was that he never had to deal with any damn paperwork—and Jiya is standing in the doorway, Rufus behind her.

“It’s not pity,” she repeats. “There are only five people in this world who have successfully time traveled, and you’re one of them. Anthony just wants to go home to his wife, Lucy’s not answering her phone, and Wyatt’s in San Diego. That’s what it is.”

Rufus looks incredibly embarrassed, and Flynn wonders how much of a tongue lashing he got from Jiya about this. “So. Will you go out with us?”

Flynn glances at the clock. He should get home to Lucy, to check up on her, but… he also doesn’t want to smother her.

He sends her a text to let her know that he might be back late, then pockets the phone and nods.

Jiya gives him a terrifyingly perky grin and saunters off, leaving the two men to trail behind her in confusion and no small bit of concern as to how this will go.

 

* * *

 

Mark and Olivia are politely doing homework upstairs in their rooms while Michelle does the dishes and Denise lets Lucy use up all of their tissues. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Denise cleans up the used tissues and throws them in the trash. “That was a long time coming, I suspect.” She smile at her wife, who winks. “Michelle gives the best hugs. Mark and Olivia can attest to it.”

“I never got to say goodbye.” Lucy isn’t sure if this is where she should start, but it’s the thought running through her head right now. “First my sister, then my mother.”

Denise sits back down next to her. “We often don’t.”

“I just—Mom wasn’t perfect. There were things about me she didn’t know, things about me she couldn’t handle. I really… struggled in her shadow. But I loved her, and I know she loved me, even if our ideas on what was best for me didn’t always mix.” Lucy rubbed at her forehead. “I… how do I even… she was sick, and dying, and it just felt better not to bring up the things… what did it matter, you know? All that mattered was the love. But then she was better, healthy, and I… I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what time you have until it’s gone,” Denise replies. “And sometimes people are taken from us far too soon. My… my father was murdered, when I was a child. And the cop who took care of me afterwards was a woman. That was how I became a cop—I’d had no idea that cops could be women.” Se passes Lucy the re-heated mug of tea. “I wish he could have seen me, and I wish… that realizing what I wanted to do with my life didn’t come at the expense of his. But I like to think that he’s proud of me, and that he’s watching.”

“What if your family never existed, though? Was never born in the first place?”

Denise’s eyes slide over to the small elephant statue in the corner. Lucy isn’t sure what it’s for—some kind of goddess in Hindu, but she doesn’t know the name.

“I believe… that the soul doesn’t just get one journey through life. You go around and around the wheel, learning new things each time. Sometimes you make it through better than others. Sometimes you make smart choices, sometimes you don’t. But the people who matter, the people you’re really tied to, you find a way back to them. You may believe whatever you like, of course, Lucy, but for what it’s worth… I think your mother and your sister will find their way back to you. In another form, perhaps, but they will.”

She sips her tea. It’s warm, and sweet, and soothing. “Mom was Rittenhouse. A direct descendent. That was how—she lied to me about how she met my biological father. About all of it. And she—she was a part of it, at least in, in one timeline. My first—the one I knew, she wasn’t, she couldn’t be, but this second timeline, without Amy, without the father I knew growing up, I don’t know. I don’t know and I can’t ask her, and I—was my mother—evil?” A rough laugh escapes her. “I know that sounds so childish, to use that word, but. I don’t know, I don’t _know_. Was it all a lie?”

Denise reaches out and gently gets Lucy’s hair out of her face. “I don’t know, and sometimes, that’s the beauty and the pain of it. My father never lived to know that I’m gay. I’ll never know how he would react. If he would accept or reject me. And that’s a blessing, because I never have to fear his disownment. But it’s also a curse, because I will never get to rejoice in his acceptance.”

“What about your mother?”

Denise’s mouth twists. From the kitchen comes a short barking noise that might be laughter, Lucy can’t tell for sure, as Michelle dries the dishes.

“My mother doesn’t approve of certain… lifestyle choices,” Denise says, the last two words sounding like acid in her mouth. “She doesn’t know about my wife, or my children. We speak a couple of times a year, over Skype.”

Lucy stares at her. “And you—she doesn’t—she doesn’t even know she has grandchildren?”

“I keep telling her to reach out,” Michelle says over her shoulder. “But I married a mule.”

“My mother wouldn’t accept them as hers,” Denise replies. “Not like this.”

“I said the same thing about my mother,” Lucy admits. “About how I—I had a girlfriend, in college. I never really… put a label on it. But now—I wish she’d known all of me. Every part. Not just the parts that I thought she would like.”

Denise seems to consider this.

“I’m sorry I came here,” Lucy adds. “And—and impose. I just—I was reading up on history, and so much of it has changed… I mean, my history degree is useless. If I even still existed and had it. Everything from the 1770s on is just. Changed. In America, at least, and that’s where my expertise is.”

Denise leans back. “And it’s not all for the better, is it?”

Lucy stares at her. “How’d you know?”

“You wouldn’t be so upset you were coming to me if it was all good.”

Lucy sips her tea. It really is good tea. “I… everything I’ve known is gone. I feel so useless. And I feel like… if we got rid of this awful thing, this group, then shouldn’t it all be fine? Shouldn’t it all be better? And it’s—it’s not, and what do I do with that?”

Denise drums her fingers on the back of the couch for a moment. “There are always good people out there. No matter how much a regime tries to wipe them out. And not everyone is black and white. You have your… well, your outright bigots, the cartoon villains. But you also have people who are more complex than that. And you have your people who will do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or the wrong thing for the right reasons.” She adds abruptly, “Was there any area of history you wanted to study but couldn’t?”

Lucy feels like she was smacked in the back of the head. “I—um.” Mom always insisted on American history. “I—I like ancient history, in Central and South America. The Mayans, the Olmecs, the Aztecs, the Incas. I like Ancient Egypt. And France, I love French history.”

“Well. The world is yours, now. If you want to study that…” Denise waves her hand. “There’s nothing stopping you.”

…huh.

“You get to be whoever you want now, Lucy. I think it’s time you find out who that is, and not just who your mother thought you should be.” Denise purses her lips, then gives a small smile. “You do that, and I’ll think about talking to my mother. Does that sound like a fair deal to you?”

Lucy’s pretty sure she’s being talked to in Denise’s mom voice and is also pretty sure that Denise makes similar deals with Mark and Olivia all the time. But she nods, because she wants to be talked to in a mom voice right now. And it’s a sound deal.

“Sounds fair to me.”

They shake on it.

 

* * *

 

She gets home late, responding to Flynn’s text with a _no problem, I’m at Denise’s_. She’s glad to know he’s going out, making friends. He shouldn’t have to be tied to her, tied to his guilt. Lucy’s well aware, thanks, that he considers her his penance, the price he has to, deserves to, pay for what he did. She’s not keeping him from his family—he said before John Rittenhouse, at the horses, that he wouldn’t go back to them. That what he’s already done has made it impossible for him to feel at home with them again.

But she’s keeping him from everything else, and it eats at her.

When she gets up the stairs, the light is on. Did he wait up for her?

Lucy opens the door and finds it’s not just the lights. There’s food staying warm in the oven, and Flynn’s pouring a bottle of wine, like he heard the car pull in and opened it just now for her.

She thinks she might start crying again.

“What if I ate at Denise’s?” she asks.

“It’s eleven,” Flynn replies. “You always have a late-night snack. And you got there too late, they’d already had dinner. Denise eats early because of the kids.”

This is how he kept kicking their asses with the time travel, she thinks. He has an eye for detail. He plans. He gets it.

But she doesn’t say any of that, because the last thing either of them need right now is to be reminded of how they got here.

Instead she just crosses to the table, and sits down, and lets Flynn pour her wine, their fingers brushing when he hands her the glass, and lets him serve her the dinner he made just for her, and when he smiles, bashful and soft, she smiles back, and—it doesn't feel forced.

It feels grown, instead of made.


	4. Chapter 4

Denise isn’t pleased about the whole running to San Diego thing.

“I told you to stay here,” she says, as Jess waves awkwardly behind Wyatt. “Were you this obstinate in the other…” She glances at Jess. “…situation?”

“Worse, ma’am,” Wyatt replies.

Denise walks over to Jess and shakes her hand. “Agent Christopher with Homeland Security. I’m just going to need to ask you some questions to help us clear your husband. If you’ll just step right this way…”

Jess nods, unfazed—this isn’t the first time she’s had to deal with Wyatt’s Delta bullshit, and Jess is generally unfazed by anything, up to and including murder.

Once everything’s cleared, Denise looks ready to read him the riot act over fleeing to San Diego again. Wyatt puts his hands up. “I knew she wouldn’t come if I just asked her to,” he says quickly. “Things are on the rocks between us. Or they were, what I could remember. So I—I just, I took a guess. She would’ve seen it as being… summoned.”

Denise narrows her eyes and folds her arms. “I can appreciate that,” she says, like she’s weighing each word on a scale before she speaks it. “But you should have cleared it with me first. For a Delta man you’re not the best at taking orders.”

Wyatt shrugs. “What can I say, I’m a bit of a cowboy.”

“Growing up in Texas doesn’t make you a cowboy, McClane,” Denise says. “Most cowboys were actually men of color. Hispanic, mostly. And gay.”

“I thought the history facts was Lucy’s job,” Wyatt shoots back without thinking, feeling wrong-footed, his stomach getting oddly tight and heavy like someone just chucked a block of concrete into it.

“Your wife was very insightful,” Denise goes on. “Provided me with a lot of great information about you. And you know what I think, Master Sergeant?”

She sits back against her desk, arching an eyebrow at him. Wyatt feels like he’s just stepped into a trap, a roach that checked into the wrong motel, and now he won’t be able to get out. “No, ma’am.”

“I think that you want to follow orders.” Denise shrugs. “I could be wrong, of course. But my guess? You want to be told what to do, but you also want to know that the person doing the telling is going to follow through if you rebel. Because if they follow through on that, they’ll follow through on taking responsibility if things fuck up. You want to know that if you put your trust in them, they’re going to be worthy of it.”

It’s like someone’s doused him in cold water. “I…”

Denise gives him a short nod. “Woman of color in the police force? I couldn’t trust anyone to have my back. I got a lot of trust issues that way. Word of advice, Logan? Most people don’t like brats. Make it easier on yourself, give a little to get a little.”

Wyatt’s feet seem to be sunk into the floor, stuck. He tries to swallow and can’t. “Ma’am… Agent Christopher…”

“You going back into Delta?”

That throws him for another loop and he hasn’t recovered from the first one. “I don’t know. Um. Jess and I started divorce proceedings so. I should probably be here for that.”

Denise nods. “Ever thought about switching over to Homeland?”

“You want to make it easier to babysit me?”

Denise sighs like she is suddenly, painfully grasping what their dynamic was like in the other timeline and she doesn’t like it one bit. “No, I’m thinking that from what you’ve told me, the last thing you need to do is go back overseas. I suggest you find a more settled occupation.”

“I…” He falters. “I don’t know of a place that would take me, ma’am.” Not how he is. He’s got no idea what his life is supposed to be like, and no place to really start. Going back into Delta would be easy, but it would also feel wrong, like putting on someone else’s coat. This isn’t his life. This isn’t his timeline. He needs to be somewhere that has people who understand he’s an outsider. That he’s still adjusting.

Denise glances out of her office window. “Well. I think Mason Industries is always in need of another security person. They’ll take you.”

Wyatt nods, his throat tight.

“Close the door on your way out,” Denise adds. “And if you need… we have outreach programs, Wyatt. Groups, individual therapy sessions. If you need something, I have resources.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says, “but I don’t think there’s a therapist out there who can handle talking about time travel.” They’ll think he’s crazy.

Denise looks a bit amused. “I suppose that’s what your friends are for, then,” she says.

Wyatt walks out instead of asking her _what friends?_

Rufus and Lucy were becoming his friends. He trusted them. And then he learned that Lucy had been secretly speaking to Flynn, and apparently gave Flynn her journal, and her father is Rittenhouse. He learned that Rufus had been spying on them this entire time. They’d all been keeping secrets from each other, and it took them nearly dying in the damn wilderness in the 18th century for them to get their shit together.

Now, he thinks, they are friends of a sort, again. But is it enough to keep them together now that all this has changed? Now that he has a wife who’s alive and divorcing him, now that Rufus has a family that’s his and not his all at once, now that Lucy has had her entire existence torn away?

Can they really stick it out for each other? Are they strong enough for that?

Jess waits for him in the lobby, scribbling on a notebook as she always is, scrolling idly through her Twitter feed every so often to keep abreast of the latest news stories. She looks up as he walks up to her. “How’d it go?”

“She suggested I find a new job and that I… seek therapy.”

“So what I’ve been telling you for five years.” Jess stands up, dropping her phone and notebook into her purse. “Maybe you’ll listen now that it’s someone other than me saying it.”

He glares at her but knows it doesn’t do much as Jess turns and walks out the glass front doors. “Lunch?” she asks.

Wyatt follows her to a café nearby. They sit outside, and he watches as the sun hits her hair, makes it even paler. Sees her how dark eyes snap from person to person, catching everything, missing nothing. Takes in how her shoulders tense, relax, bunch up, slope down.

He loves her, so much. But he feels like he’s looking at a ghost. “Jess?”

“Hmm?” She looks at him, tilting her head the way she always would, and God, it’s her, and she’s so real it makes him ache, but how can he love a memory?

“I’d have to relearn how to love you,” he says, the words coming out of his mouth even as they form in his mind, and he winces at how that sounds. “If we—didn’t get divorced, I mean. I want… I want you to know, that’s why I’m saying yes. Because—you deserve for me to give you what you ask for, and to get out of your way. But I also… I forgot, somehow, I was—I was loving—not you, but this memory of you. And if we stayed together I’d have to… forget that memory.”

Jess looks at him, unblinking, as the waiter comes up with their sandwiches and coffee. “Are you okay, Wyatt?”

“I don’t know.” It’s the most honest answer he can give.

Jess’s hands slide around her coffee mug, interlocking, and she stares down into it like it’s showing her an unknown galaxy. “Wyatt, we… I love, how much you love me. And I’ve never doubted that love. But it’s stifling. I can’t be everything to you. Nobody can. You need—you need friends, and I mean real friends, friends that you talk to about shit. You need more than I can give you.”

Wyatt picks at his sandwich. “You—I’m lost, Jess. I’ve been… for years, I’ve been so lost and I don’t know—what the hell am I supposed to do? Who the hell am I supposed to be?”

“You’re not _supposed_ to be anyone.” Jess sips at her coffee, her fingers drumming on the table. That’s Jess for you, never still, always twitching, itching, ready to reach for the next star. “If anything, you’re…” A _tssk_ ing noise emerges from the back of her throat. “Y’know, it feels like I’m talking to a completely different person. And that’s a good thing. The Wyatt who went off on his latest mission—he didn’t want to admit he was lost. And you’re admitting you’re lost, and that’s good. It is, Wyatt. Because you can’t become the person you were always meant to be until you do that. You can’t find the right path until you admit you’re on the wrong one.”

“All I know how to be is your husband.” He can feel his face heating up. “That’s… that’s why I was… y’know. All I was, am, is a soldier and Jessica Logan’s husband.” He takes a sip of his coffee to try and cover up his embarrassment, and only ends up burning his throat instead.

Jess pushes his glass of water towards him. “Well, now you can learn to be someone else. You shouldn’t define yourself by your relationships.” She wets her lips. “Wyatt, is this because I…”

“No.” It’s not. It never was.

She glances up at him, then looks away, a flicker, a butterfly flapping its wings. “Because you don’t owe me.”

“I know that. It was never… you were the only one who ever loved me. After Gramps.” His grandfather did what he could to combat Wyatt’s father, but… “I lost Gramps and I was scared of losing you. If I lost you, who else was gonna love me? I’m nobody, I’m a washed-up kid from a town you can’t find on the map. Never went to college, never did shit for himself. Who was I, who did I have, if I lost you?”

Jess sits back in her seat. “I wasn’t ever trying to run away from you.” Her voice is thicker, more choked, than Wyatt expects, and he can’t help but think that it’s a great irony, and perfectly representative of their relationship, that he never let her take him to therapy but here they are hashing out their twenty-year relationship in a fuckin’ sidewalk café. “I just wanted some room to breathe, Wyatt, I just wanted to be able to breathe. I loved you. And I could see what kind of person you could be, this—this softness in you and I wanted to reach it so badly, I did, and I tried, but you’d hide it from me and from yourself and you’re so—you’re so scared of me leaving that you’re strangling me and I can’t do it, Wyatt, I can’t.”

Someone walks by their table and Jess quickly looks away to hide her wet eyes. Wyatt clears his throat, finds that his own eyes are stinging and doesn’t know what to do with it.

“I did everything for you,” Jess says, her voice in a monotone. “Was that not enough proof? You didn’t ever have to cage me in to make me stay. I was always going to come back.”

He can still remember what the house smelled like when he got inside. The rancid smell of shit, because—fun fact—bodies often defecate when they die. The thick stillness of the air.

Jess, standing at the sink, vigorously washing out a beer bottle.

 _I was going to cut the brake lines,_ she’d said. _But then you drove the damn car into the lake so there went that plan._

There hadn’t been much of an investigation. Local asshole dies choking on the beer he was addicted to, yeah, nobody was exactly eager to look more into that.

Wyatt’s known since then that Jess is the one with the backbone. Out of the two of them, Jess does what needs to be done. Justice, vengeance, two sides of the same coin to Jess. She doesn’t let anything stop her once she knows there’s a bastard to be stopped.

“I was scared I wouldn’t be enough,” he says. _And it looks like I was right_ , he wants to add, but he knows saying that out loud will just lead to more yelling.

Jess sighs and nods for him to start eating his damn sandwich before it gets cold. “Self-fulfilling prophecy, Wyatt. You were too much, not… not enough. You swung the other way.” _Drove me away,_ he knows she’s thinking, although she’s kind enough not to say it.

There’s not really a lot they have to say out loud. They’ve known each other since they were ten, been dating since they were fifteen, he can read he better than he can read a Dr. Seuss book.

Silence lingers as they both eat.

“You might not believe it,” Jess says at last, “but I’m bad for you. Just like you’re bad for me. It’s not just you weighing me down, Wyatt. I’m weighing you down, too. You have to let me go.”

He’s not sure that he believes it. At least not yet. But this is what Jess wants, and he’s spent enough time denying her.

They split the check, and Wyatt goes to Mason Industries and signs up for the security team.

It isn’t until he gets there to fill out an application that he learns who the new head of security is.

“Really?” he asks, staring at Flynn, who just shrugs, hands on his hips.

“Where else was I going to go?” Flynn asks him.

 _With your wife and child,_ Wyatt could say, but then, Flynn could shoot right back that Wyatt’s looking pretty wife-less himself right now, and Wyatt could fight with the guy, it would at least get him back onto solid ground, familiar ground, but Flynn was actually right in fuckin’ D.C. and they made a halfway decent team (too good of a team, a long-dormant part of his brain whispers) at Rittenhouse’s place, and he just got done with Jess and he’s so, so wrung out.

“Yeah, fair point,” he says instead, and he hands in his application.

Flynn doesn’t even look at it. “You start Monday.”

Wyatt ain’t the Trojans, so he doesn’t look this gift horse in the mouth.

 

* * *

 

It’s probably some kind of masochism of the highest order, but she goes to Stanford.

She can still remember walking here with Mom, Carol chatting about how Lucy would apply to come here, and be a historian, and they’d get to work together, and wouldn’t it be such fun.

It had been fun, in some ways. She’s written three books with her mother, one on the history of San Francisco, one on the Revolutionary War, and one on great women of the 20th century.

It had also been frustrating. Living in her mother’s shadow. Doing what she thought she had to do and being who she thought she had to be, instead of just finding out who she _could_ be.

It’s surreal, walking onto campus. She knows this place by heart. She’s spent about ten years of her life here, all told. When Mom got sick, really sick, Lucy’s responsibilities kicked up. The board wanted her to take over her mother’s lectures and work, since Lucy’d worked so closely with Mom all these years.

She should have gotten tenure, dammit. After all she did for them. She deserves it.

But of course now—now nobody even knows her name.

She walks down the hallways, and across the quad, and past the freshman dorms, and not one person stops her. There are faces she recognizes, students and faculty alike, and many that she doesn’t. Some of the names on the doors of the offices are changed.

Rebecca, a friend of hers from the literature department, is having lunch out with Clarissa from gender studies. Lucy’s hand comes up to wave—and she realizes she can’t.

That’s all gone, now. Neither of those women will know who she is. They might wave back out of instinctive politeness or confusion, or they might just stare, but they won’t wave her over and ask how she’s been and how her mom is holding up.

Lucy stands in the middle of her entire career, a woman literally out of time, as the wave of humanity moves and ripples around her, a lone stone in the middle of the river, and feels more alone than she has in her entire life.

A literal decade of work is gone. A decade of who she is, is now gone.

A gaggle of freshmen girls pass her, looking around them with a bit of trepidation, sticking close to each other like herd animals in the African savannah. _The whole world is open to you,_ Lucy wants to tell them. _You could do anything. You’re young, and you know who you are. You have a place in the world._

They aren’t standing at the edge of a void waiting for it to swallow them.

But then… she has the world open to her as well, doesn’t she? Once, she’d wanted to join a band and sing her way through life. She’d wanted to go backpacking through Europe. She’d wanted to run away to New York and become a costume designer for Broadway.

She can do whatever she wants now, right? Mason and Denise would take care of the paperwork. Denise had assured her of that. She can be anyone. Do anything.

Her feet take her to the history department. Her office is now occupied by another woman, a Dr. Hawass. Good for her. Down the hall, to the left, that had been her mom’s office until Carol had gotten too sick and had resigned.

She can go to Oxford. Or even farther afield. She can study whatever she wants, or study nothing at all.

Carol was Rittenhouse. Or at least, she used to be. But the mother Lucy remembers, the one she can’t get out of her head—she was stubborn and a tough grader, she expected her orders to be obeyed, she was a perfectionist and she was controlling. But she was also loving, in her own way. She wanted the best for both of her daughters. She held Lucy when Lucy’s heart was broken in high school. She nursed Lucy whenever Lucy had a cold, and sang her lullabies, and taught her how to dance.

And God help her, but for all Carol’s faults, Lucy still loves her. She can’t cut her mother out of her heart, even if it would be wise to do so. Whatever Carol’s faults were—she loved her husband. Nobody could make her laugh like Henry could. And she loved her daughters. After she and Amy got into screaming fights, Amy’s favorite ice cream would appear in the freezer.

She’s her mother, the only mother Lucy’s ever had, and she can’t—she can’t just let go of that. And she does like history, even if now she’s starting at the bottom again, has experienced history as a living, breathing thing, a changeable monster, and not just something static and frozen.

There need to be more people like that. There need to be more people who view history as alive, but she is standing in history now, someday she will be history, she’s already been history, at the Alamo, at the Hindenburg, in Ford’s Theatre, she is history.

When she gets home, she calls Denise.

“I’d like to apply to Stanford,” she says. She could go anywhere else if she wanted. But that would be running away. She tried that once, and her car skidded off the road. She’s staying her course, now. “I want to study history.”

Carol Preston was Rittenhouse. She was complicated, and sometimes Lucy wishes she’d fought more, yelled more, but God, she loves her, and Carol tried. She really fucking tried, like most parents tried.

She'll make that her legacy.

 

* * *

 

It takes him a week to remember that Emma’s business card is in the pocket of his pants, and he only recalls it because Emma asks him if he gave it to Lucy. She doesn’t look all that surprised when guilt stabs at his chest—it must show on his face, too.

“I’m not going to take her out on a date,” Emma tells him. A mischievous glint enters her eye. “Unless that’s what she’s into.”

He promises he’ll give Lucy the card, and Jiya’s number as well, and tries to ignore the envy that rises up in his throat like bile.

Anthony had told him that Emma had learned of Rittenhouse and stranded herself, faking her own death, rather than give into them. Flynn planned to recruit her, but the whole… the whole Rittenhouse thing went down before he could.

So Lucy doesn’t—she doesn’t know an Emma who’s on Flynn’s side, an Emma who’s planting the bombs Flynn makes for her. Emma has no tainted memories in Lucy’s mind.

Emma didn’t kill a child.

He can try and absolve himself of his other sins, or at least carry them on his shoulders, but that one, he doesn’t know how. A child, a literal child, only a few years older than his baby girl, and it’s an eye for an eye but he’s as blind as before. If he had any chance with Lucy before (and he doesn’t think he did, if anyone had a chance it was Wyatt and Wyatt’s been a little busy throwing himself onto the pyre of Jess’s funeral) that’s all up in smoke, now. He can’t even look himself in the eye, how can she—how can she possibly?

Lucy isn’t his, and he’s not scared of Emma snatching her from him. Because Lucy doesn’t belong to him, doesn’t belong to anyone. But he envies Emma her blank slate, her ability to be worthy of Lucy’s affection.

He avoids Wyatt for the rest of the day—the guy’s just starting out and a bit lost, and normally Flynn doesn’t at all begrudge Wyatt a bit of puppy behavior, following Flynn around and then pretending that’s not what he’s doing at all—but he can’t look Wyatt in the eye right now because he’s read the journal and he can’t look at Wyatt’s truths when they’re so close to his own.

When he gets home, he gives Lucy the card, and Jiya’s number. “They want to take you out to lunch,” he says.

“Oh.” Lucy has papers spread out in front of her—her new life, her new backstory, like a spy in a war film. _Infiltrate this prestigious university._ “Thank you.”

“You should go. It’ll be… Emma’s funny, you’ll like her jokes. And you know Jiya.”

“Not as well as I’d like,” Lucy admits. She fingers the card, smoothing her thumb over it, and Flynn is unbearably entranced by the movement. The room is too small, she's on the couch and he's across her, all the way against the wall, but it's still too close. He can't breathe when he's near her. Or, rather, he can, but all that he can breathe is her.

“I’m going on a trip,” he says.

Lucy blinks a few times. “A… what? Where?”

“To the east coast.”

“The east coast,” Lucy repeats after him. She sounds like he handed her a cattle prod and told her to use it on him. “For how long?”

“I’m not sure.” He didn’t even know he was going on a trip until this moment but the more he thinks about it the more right it sounds. He can—he needs to get away from Lucy. He needs to give her proper space, he needs to remove himself, for her sake and so that he can maybe, somehow, start to—

And his family. He needs to see his family. They won’t see him. But he has to make sure. Get the proof with his own eyes. He can be stealthy about it, they’ll never know that he was there. Some answers have to be seen, some proof must be felt.

“When are you leaving?” Lucy asks, and there is something odd in her voice, like she’s a cat pushing a vase towards the edge of a table.

He’ll have to check flights to be sure. “Tomorrow.”

Lucy stares at him and then, with a deliberate air, gathers up her papers and leaves the living room. The door to her bedroom isn’t slammed, no, it’s very carefully closed.

He spends the rest of the night packing. There is nothing but silence from Lucy’s room.


	5. Chapter 5

Flynn leaves, just like that, just like it’s nothing to him, like he can just cut the apron strings and run off wherever, whenever—

Lucy stays in her room until she hears the front door closing, signaling his departure.

The east coast, he said. Flynn didn’t say anything more than that, but Lucy can read between the lines. She’s not an idiot, as much as her sniffling and crying the last few weeks might give the impression of that. Lorena and Iris are on the east coast. Flynn’s family.

He’s going back to them.

 _I’ll be back_ , but will he really be? What if he was just staying with her out of guilt and now that she’s applying to Stanford, now that she’s moving on, he’s ridding himself of her? Going back to his family and his old life now that his penance has been served?

Perhaps it’s unfair to him to think this. Flynn has been nothing but kind to her since they stepped out of the Mothership—well, he stepped out, and carried her. It’s surprised her, this soft, gentle, hesitant man. He’s so different from the man she knew, the one who was wild with grief, with rage, with pain, this man who was willing to do literally anything, including things she knew that he knew were wrong, in order to succeed in his greater plan.

If this was the man that Lorena knew, no wonder she fell in love with him. Lucy can see…

Nothing, she tells herself. She can see nothing. There’s nothing for her to see, nothing she’s allowed to look at. Flynn has gone back to Lorena, and to his daughter, and that’s how it should be. After all he has put himself through, he deserves to be rewarded. Even if he doesn’t see it that way. She isn’t sure if she agrees with what he did, but she saw the agony on Flynn’s face during, and after, and she knows that what he did—it was wrong, but he did it for the right reasons, and so she’s not sure how much she can fault him for it. Not when he was doing it to save his family, to save all of them.

The apartment isn’t terribly large. It’s roomy enough that she can get away from Flynn or anyone else and have alone time if she wants to, but it’s not so large that you have to really yell to be heard if you’re in another room. After Flynn leaves, though, it feels far too large. It’s not a sensation that Lucy’s used to. Rooms feeling too small, that she has a deep and intimate knowledge of. But the other way around? It’s foreign.

She feels so very small since they got back. Like she’s shrinking and the world is expanding, leaving out room for her. She could call Jiya or Emma, she supposes, but she’s not close enough to either of them to feel all right with dumping her issues on them. And Denise has already dealt with her once. She doesn’t want to be a burden.

Part of her is tempted to call her old friends. Because she did have them, before all of this time traveling. God forbid she actually get to see them. God forbid she get to focus on her work with the school. Her entire schedule’s been insane with all the (usually late night) rushing to Mason Industries to chase after Flynn. She had friends, she had colleagues, and she wants to call them and demand that they remember her, demand that somehow she reach through timelines and call up memories so that they know her once more.

Instead, she downs far too much of a bottle of vodka, watches old movies on the Turner Classics channel, and at some point, calls Wyatt.

He shows up at about two in the morning, knocking on the front door. “Lucy?”

She doesn’t remember calling him, but she must have, because here he is, wild-eyed and looking her up and down like he’s expecting her to be covered in blood and asking him to help hide a body. “You all right?”

Lucy lets him in, taking in his appearance. He looks as much of a mess as she feels, wearing the same shirt she saw him in three days ago, his stubble worse than usual, and his hair looking like a raccoon was tugging at it.

“I’m fine,” she replies, because she is. She’s fine. “What are you doing here?” The room feels cockeyed.

“You called me,” Wyatt points out. “You called me and you were crying and asking me to come over.”

“Oh.” She goes to sit down on the couch, but it’s somehow moved two feet to the right, and Wyatt has to take her by the elbow and guide her down onto it.

“Jesus Christ, how much have you had?” he mutters, and she sees that the vodka is still out.

“Flynn’s gone.” She sounds like a petulant child but she can’t help it.

Wyatt glances at her, puts the top back on the vodka, and then goes to put it away in the kitchen. “He’ll be back. He can’t stay away from you for long.”

There’s an odd weight to that sentence but she can’t parcel it out when she’s like this. “No, he’s… he went back.”

“Back where?”

Lucy gestures vaguely into the air. “Back.” Surely Wyatt understands what that means.

He sits down on the edge of the couch. “Look, Lucy, wherever Flynn’s gone to, he’ll come back. I… I know that much.”

She tries to throw her arm over her eyes and ends up hitting herself in the nose in the process. Ow. “He won’t even touch me.”

“Uh…”

“Like… I’m not… I just want to be hugged, and he looks like he’d give really good hugs. Doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, yeah, he does.” Wyatt sounds relieved that she doesn’t mean touch in the way that Wyatt clearly thought she did.

Lucy sits up. Ooh. Bad idea. “I just. Everyone leaves me, Wyatt, I lose—I lost everyone. I lost Amy, and my mom, and before that I lost my dad, and now I’ve lost myself, and Flynn—I lose everyone!” Her voice is rising to a fever pitch, hysterical, and God only knows what the neighbors are thinking. “I’ve lost—I’ve lost e-everyone—”

Wyatt pulls her in, shushing her, rocking her gently. Her head finds his shoulder. It’s solid. “You haven’t lost me,” he promises. “You haven’t lost me.”

She wants to point out that she has—he has Delta, and Jess, he has his own life, she has nothing—but her tears are sealing her eyes shut and he’s warm and she likes being held too much and he smells good and between one breath and the next, she’s asleep.

Lucy wakes up to an aggravated assault from the sunlight coming in through the window.

“Morning,” Wyatt calls from the kitchen.

She manages to lift the one-ton weights off her eyes long enough to see Wyatt in her kitchen, frying something up.

“I can’t cook much, but I do know how to make eggs and toast,” he tells her. “There’s some water and aspirin on the coffee table.”

Lucy keeps her eyes closed and blindly gropes for the pills and water glass. “Please tell me I didn’t throw up on you.”

“No.” Wyatt takes the eggs off the stove as Lucy slowly executes the herculean task of sitting up. “You got mad when I tried to move you into your bedroom, though. You wanted to stay out here. In case F…”

Wyatt’s voice dies away and he busies himself with getting plates, but Lucy knows where that sentence was going. _In case Flynn came back._

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she snaps, knowing it’s unkind but feeling exposed, like a raw nerve. “A wife to get back to?”

Wyatt doesn’t rise to the bait. He pulls the orange juice out of the fridge and says, “No, don’t have anyone to get back to.”

She chokes a little on her water. “…Jess…?”

“Isn’t a part of the equation anymore.” Wyatt walks over with a plate of eggs and toast, which he sets in front of her, some silverware, and a glass of orange juice. “Coffee?”

“Two sugars, touch of milk.”

“Jess wanted a divorce. I guess I’ve still been pretty shitty, Rittenhouse or no Rittenhouse. I was going to… I almost told her about everything. About the time travel and all that. I was going to drag her to Mason Industries and show her the time machines. But then I remembered… you know.” Wyatt’s throat goes visibly tight as he brings the coffee over and sits down next to her. To Lucy’s relief, he sits right next to her, close enough that she can lean into him. She’s so touch-starved, she feels like she’s aching, shivering, and Wyatt’s warmth is almost enough to make her cry. “I remembered some stuff that Flynn told me. And I figured… even if it wasn’t really me that did that to her, I wasn’t the best before her death. There was a reason she got out of the car. And I thought it was time that I just started doing what Jess wanted for once, what she felt was best for herself, whether or not I liked it.”

The smile he gives her is forced, and wane, and Lucy knows now why he looks like such a wreck. “Wyatt, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He takes a sip of his own coffee, staring out the window. “I fucked up. It was time to pay the piper.”

Her hand finds his and squeezes. She can’t count how many times she’s wanted to do that to Flynn but held herself back. “Do you need someone to talk to?”

Wyatt nudges the plate towards her and Lucy rolls her eyes—which makes her head hurt, note to self, don’t do that again—and takes a sarcastic bite of her toast. “I don’t know what I need.”

“Denise suggested a therapist, but I can’t go to a therapist for… this.” Lucy gestures at herself. “But you could.”

“Jess said I was shit at couples’ counseling.”

“But that was the other you. You said it yourself, it was another version of you. This version of you could be good with a therapist, if you wanted to be.”

Wyatt looks down at his coffee mug. His voice is small. “What if I go, and the therapist tells me that I’m… that I’m shit?”

“No therapist worth the title is going to do that.” Dammit, these eggs are actually delicious. Or that could be the hangover talking. “You deserve to be a person that you like, Wyatt.”

Wyatt startles a little at that, the coffee sloshing in his mug, and he looks away, blinking rapidly. Lucy busies herself with her food, courteously letting him take a moment to gather himself together.

“You, uh…” Wyatt’s voice is rough. “You should—I’ll leave you Jess’s number. She’s a great person, she’d—you’d like her. I think you two could be friends. If you wanted.”

Like when Flynn gave her Jiya and Emma’s numbers, Lucy feels a stab of anger at the perceived pity, but she takes the number anyway. Beggars can’t be choosers, and she is wildly curious about this Jess—the woman that Wyatt was seeing as he talked about proposing with Bonnie and Clyde, the woman he sent a telegram to in Las Vegas, the woman he chased through time.

“Talk to Denise,” she tells him. “She’ll set you up with a counselor.”

Wyatt nods. He cleans up the breakfast, and Lucy watches him, watches him and thinks _you haven’t lost me._ “You should come over more,” she says. “You and Rufus. I miss our bar nights.”

Wyatt glances up at her through his lashes, his expression startled and soft. “If you really want…”

“I do.” She needs something to tether her and as much as she wants Flynn to be that tether, Flynn doesn’t seem to want to reciprocate. “I… I do. Movie night? Bond marathon?”

The corner of Wyatt’s mouth twitches upward. “Sounds good to me. I’ll text Rufus.”

He hugs her goodbye, and Lucy squeezes tightly until she can feel his breath stuttering, and it’s not the same as being enveloped by Flynn, but Wyatt is steady and of just the right height to put her head on his shoulder so, it works.

And she suspects, although he doesn’t say as much, that he needed that hug as much as she did.

 

* * *

 

Flynn lands in D.C. and immediately remembers how much he hates this city.

The capital of the United States has a lot going for it, theoretically. The Smithsonian, the beautiful government buildings, the culture. And yet, somehow, it all just irritates him, gets under his skin, feels soulless and strung out.

Maybe the government has something to do with it.

The last time he was here, it was for the Watergate tape. Or rather the person discussed on the tape. Lucy played him like a damn fiddle that day. He can still feel the smile on his face, the ichor in his veins, the rush from knowing she’d been smart enough to pull one over on him. She’s so goddamn smart, and she doesn’t even know it. Yet, anyway. The Lucy of the journal knew it. Hopefully, someday, this one will too.

Even if he might not be there to see it.

He takes a taxi, since he objects to Uber on principle and the train can’t get him there, and has it drop him off a few blocks away.

The neighborhood isn’t just as he remembers it. He didn’t think it would be. But it’s familiar enough to start up an ache in his chest, one that grows bigger and bigger as he walks until he thinks he might actually fall to his knees.

It’s the same house.

He stands on the corner, watching. Making sure nobody’s home.

It’s tempting to go up and pick the lock, or even just force the door open. It’s shockingly easy to get doors to open without violence, if you know how the frames and locks work. Jimmy them just so, and _pop_.

Not that he wants to disturb anything. But just to look around. To see all the things that he missed, the things he couldn’t take with him when he fled in the dead of night, leaving his life and his dead loves behind.

That would be a violation, though. An invasion. This isn’t his house anymore.

As he watches, a car pulls up—that dark blue Honda civic that he recognizes at once.

She gets out, and Flynn’s heart stops.

Lorena looks mostly the same. Her light brown hair is a bit longer than he recalls, but other than that… and there is a heaviness to her, a solemnity, that is so at odds with the lightness that he knows of her, that he almost breaks. Almost dashes down the street, almost screams _I’m home, I’m alive, I’ll never leave you again_.

But what could he say? What could he possibly do to explain? He knows the facts. He disappeared from his home nearly five years ago. He can’t explain that, not really. Oh, sure, he supposes he could lie. _I was kidnapped by a drug cartel_ , if he wants to be really fantastical about it, but almost any organization will do. He’s made a lot of enemies over the years, watched the changing face of war in real time from Croatia to Iran to Africa and beyond, and any one of them could force him to have gone on the run.

He can see it all easily, a lie built up in an instant, backed up by Christopher with just a phone call. He’d have his family back. His life back.

And he sees it all crumbling down in an instant, too, like the tower of Babel.

He has never once lied to Lorena. Not once, in their entire time together. He hasn’t lied to Lucy, or Wyatt, or Rufus, or anyone. He has had to lie, in the course of his career, but not if he can avoid it. And out of all the people in the world he could lie to, he knows it’s only a delayed death sentence to lie to your spouse.

Yet neither can he burden her with the truth.

Lorena goes to the trunk and pops it open, grabbing groceries. The back door of the car opens, and—oh God, there she is.

Iris gets out.

She’s ten years old, now. Her hair is longer. She’s ganglier, she might have inherited her father’s height. She’s still got that unicorn backpack she begged and pleaded for when she was four years old. She’s wearing purple pants.

Flynn wipes at his eyes but refuses to close them. If this is the last time he sees them, he isn’t wasting a second.

They’re so beautiful, his girls, they’re the most beautiful things in the world, but he can’t touch them. They’re paintings in a museum, now. He can’t burden them with the truth, but neither can he lie to them, and he can’t disrupt the life they’ve built while he’s been gone, he can’t open up a fresh wound when they’ve already healed it over.

Iris gets the door for Lorena, holding it open as her mother carries the groceries inside. Flynn’s body is an aching, hollow cavern, a haunted house, and the creatures inside it scream.

The door closes behind them—and a gun presses against Flynn’s back.

“Walk,” he’s told by a very familiar voice.

Flynn grins. “Long time no see, Stiv.”

 

* * *

 

Stiv takes him to a local coffeehouse, where they can hug without drawing attention from the neighbors. Flynn tries not to cling—the last time he saw Stiv was right before the Hindenburg.

It wasn’t exactly Wyatt’s fault. He was just doing his job. But he still killed Flynn’s best friend, Flynn’s best friend who is now alive and ordering coffee and sitting across from him, looking hale and hearty.

It’s… it’s a lot to take in.

"Sorry about the gun," Stiv tells him as they order. They speak in Croatian, both because it’s more comfortable and just to be on the safe side.

Flynn waves it off. "Random guy skulking around…"

"Exactly."

“For the first year, I thought you’d come back,” Stiv announces as they sit down at a window table. Always have to watch the exits, even here, even now. It's just too ingrained in them to try and stop the habit. 

He hands his phone to Flynn, shows him pictures he’s taken of Lorena and Iris—on Iris’s birthday, at Christmas, at the local swimming pool. “I looked after them. I knew you’d want that. After that first year, though…”

Flynn hands the phone back. “I wanted to come back to them. I was going to.”

“Now you have.”

Stiv so badly has wanted Flynn to be happy. Flynn’s known Stiv since they were kids and Stiv was the cool older brother who fought off bullies and got kites out of trees and got all the local street dogs to follow him around. Stiv filled the hole that Gabriel’s ghost created, the brother that Flynn could have had.

When Flynn and Matej—Stiv’s actual younger brother—got together, holding hands under the table, kissing in the shadows, Stiv was the only one they told. He kept their secret.

And when Matej died… Stiv was the only other one there.

Stiv saw the shadow that entered Flynn’s eyes and Flynn knows that Stiv has wanted it to leave for so long. When Flynn caught feelings for Lorena, Stiv was the one who encouraged him to ask her out. _You deserve to be happy, you idiot,_ he was always saying.

But it’s not so simple, this time around.

“I can’t stay,” Flynn tells him.

Stiv pours an obscene amount of sugar into his coffee, making Flynn wince. “Anyone still after you?”

“No, no, I…” Flynn scrubs a hand over his face. “It wouldn’t—I couldn’t be… myself, who I am, with them, anymore.”

Stiv looks up at him, his eyebrows raised, and then goes back to stirring his coffee. Waiting.

Flynn sighs. “I became someone else, while I was gone. I… I had to leave, suddenly. Without warning. And I kept hoping that one day I would wake up and I could just… have them here, again. My girls. But along the way I did things to survive, and to get back to them, that we never did. Before I could—we were fighting on the right side, but you know, in the thick of it—the line isn’t always clear. And we made sure not to cross that line, for ourselves. We did what we had to but we also did what we could. And I lost sight of that, trying to come home. And I became someone that I can’t share with them.

“And if I can’t share myself with them then what’s the point of being with them? I won’t lie to my wife. Or my daughter. But I can’t—let them see that darkness, either, it’s like it’s taken root in me and… I can’t handle it.”

“Lorena’s not some delicate flower, Garcia, she can handle whatever you throw at her.”

The use of his first name after so long… it nearly breaks him, and he has to look away, squint into the sun, before he looks back. “Not this. I don’t want her to know about this.”

A knowing look comes into Stiv’s eyes and he sits back. “Ah. There it is. You can’t share it with her because you don’t want to.”

Flynn looks down at his coffee, shame burning the back of his throat. Because it’s true, isn’t it? He doesn’t want to have to tell Lorena _I killed a boy, a child, to save your life. He was Iris’s age._ He doesn’t want to burden Lorena with that truth, because who can handle that? Who can handle knowing a young life was snuffed out to save theirs? Even if it was for the greater good, that’s not a burden he can throw around Lorena’s neck.

“Who I became isn’t someone I want to share with them, even if I could tell them the truth,” he admits, his voice low. “And I can’t tell them the truth. It’s too… it’s hard to swallow, even without all the… the shit that I pulled along the way.”

They drink coffee in silence for a few moments. Stiv doesn’t say anything for a bit, watching Flynn who watches his coffee swirl around in his mug. At last, Stiv speaks.

“You deserve to be happy, Garcia. Whatever you’ve done. Even if it’s not with Lorena and Iris. They are… they are happy. It took a while. Lorena took Iris to counseling. But they’ve made peace, as much peace as they can.”

Flynn knows what it is to be the child of a person who has lost a spouse. Maria was lucky in that she found Asher, but grief changed her. It wasn’t until he was fourteen that he learned—with Asher’s permission—that he was named after Maria’s first husband, Gabriel’s father, but even before that he knew that Maria carried more weight in her heart than most. He never meant to give Lorena that same grief. Never meant to hurt her that way.

But to return, he knows, would only be to cause her more pain.

“If you went back to them… I think they would be happy. I don’t know, I trust your judgment. But I also know that they have found a way to be happy with the memory of you. So my only question is…” Stiv takes Flynn’s wrist, and he would when they were boys, leading Flynn and Matej off on adventures. Flynn looks up, forces himself to meet Stiv’s gentle but unavoidable gaze. “Can you find a way to be happy?”

Flynn wets his lips. He is happy with… with Lucy. Or rather he knows that he could be. She strikes up a fire in him and Flynn is only too happy to burn. It’s not like Lorena, who was an ocean tide that drowned him. Both are equally welcome, just… just different.

And unlike Lorena, Lucy knows. Knows the truth.

Does she accept that about him? Can she? She met him, the wolf on the path to grandmother’s, and she looked him right in the eyes and did not back down. She bared her teeth right back. She said, _no, you move, get off my path._ And when he retreated into the woods, she dared to follow, to enter the shadows under the trees and say _no, no, I will show you the way back._

Stiv leans back. “There is someone.”

“I—”

“I know that look in your eyes, Garcia. I’ve known it since you were a boy and would chase after Matej. Stars in your eyes, Garcia, you always got stars in your eyes.”

Flynn downs the remainder of his coffee. “Can your heart belong to two people at once?”

“It can. But it doesn’t usually work out.”

“This wouldn’t work out.” How could he, on top of everything, bring home this new, random woman to Lorena and say _by the way, I’ve fallen for someone else, you don’t mind sharing, do you?_

That is if Lucy would even want him, and he doubts she does. Lucy does not want a murderer. The Lucy of the journal wanted him, but the Flynn of the journal did not have hands so bloodstained.

“It’s unfair, to Lorena. On… on many levels. In many ways.”

“Does this other person love you?”

“I doubt she can. But if anyone could…” Certain passages of the journal are burned into his mind, and he sees them now, whether he tries to or not. “…it would be her.”

Stiv finishes his own coffee, setting the mug aside. “I trust you, Garcia. If you believe that staying away is what’s best for your family and best for you, then God knows—I haven’t seen my mother in years and we both know that’s the best thing for it. But if you think you’re punishing yourself, and that you deserve it, don’t.”

He squeezes Flynn’s wrist, and then lets go. “You deserve to be happy, my brother. You always have.”

Stiv insists on paying, and Flynn promises to keep in touch at some point, although they both know if he does, it will be brief. This might be—no, probably will be—the last time they see each other.

But at least this time he knows it’s the last. This time he can properly say goodbye, instead of standing in front of a raging fire, burning with loss and anger, scaring Lucy half to death because on top of everything else, he’s just lost a man he called brother.

They hug tightly, and Flynn lets Stiv leave first.

Flynn watches the line of his back until Stiv disappears around the corner.

 

* * *

 

He’s come, he’s seen them. There’s nothing else to do. But he can’t go back just yet.

The Smithsonian is nice. So are the parks. Flynn has fallen victim to the trap that most residents do in a city—he’s seen less of it than the tourists have. So he is a tourist for a couple of weeks, and sees the sights, and soaks up the history. The Washington Monument is still there. That’s nice. Lincoln was, apparently, still assassinated, although not by him.

As if that erases the memory from his eyes, his mind, Lucy scared and screaming, blood on her dress, on his suit, the gun in his hand.

He sees it all, what’s unchanged and what’s new, and then he gets on a plane and heads home.

_You deserve to be happy._

If Stiv knew it all, would he still agree?

 

* * *

 

Wyatt promised himself, when Flynn returned, that he would be calm about this. He’d just tell Flynn that Lucy was really hurt by Flynn’s departure, and that’ll be that.

He is not calm at all about this.

Flynn doesn’t announce his return any more than he announced his departure. He’s just back in his office one morning, and Wyatt wouldn’t even know if he didn’t walk past and happen to see him.

Anger rises up in him like some kind of vicious dog and before he knows it he’s stepping into the office and closing the door behind him. “You want to explain what the fuck you’re doing?”

Flynn looks up, and Wyatt nearly takes it all back, nearly apologizes. Flynn looks like absolute shit, like he took three red eyes and gargled a bottle of cheap tequila before walking into work. Wyatt has seen Flynn in every time period imaginable and he’s always looked damn fine, his suits tailored, sporting cufflinks and pocket handkerchiefs and all the rest.

Not that Wyatt thinks of Flynn, or any man, as _damn fine_ , but, hey, he’s not blind, all right? Flynn knows how to rock a look and Wyatt hasn’t so much as seen the guy in sweatpants before, never mind looking like a total wreck.

But Flynn honestly looks like he wants to throw himself off a cliff, and Wyatt nearly reverses course and undoes his words.

Nearly.

“Wyatt,” Flynn says, in that snarky-yet-patient tone that Wyatt hates more than nails on a chalkboard. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of this argument?”

“You just left.” Wyatt tries to keep his voice down, he really does, but it’s hard. “You just left her, do you have any idea—she was getting drunk off her ass and crying her eyes out to me over the phone and she doesn’t even remember half of it, that’s how bad it was!”

Flynn sets down the papers he was holding. “…Lucy?”

“Yes, Lucy, who else could it be, Jiya? What could possibly be so important—”

“I went to see my family.” Flynn’s voice is a bit raw around the edges, but firm. “To see my child. You’ve never had a child, have you, Wyatt? Not in any timeline I know about.”

If Flynn thinks that’s going to get Wyatt to let the subject drop, he’s got another think coming.

“I never had a kid,” Wyatt snaps. “I never did, so I don’t know what that’s like, but I did have brothers in arms, okay? I was in the army, and I did bad things because I knew they were counting on me. And I was told that my country was depending on me. And I did shit things because I wanted to protect Jess and I wanted to—for good reasons, I did bad things for good reasons. And you know what? It doesn’t fucking matter what my good reasons were. They were still bad things. Jess divorced me. The U.S. screwed over the Middle East and they screwed over me and every other grunt.”

“Jess…” Flynn sounds surprised, like he’s rolling the thought over in his mouth, his mind.

Wyatt doesn’t want to think about that right now.

“The point is, whether it was for a good reason or not, you screwed Lucy over. You left her and she needs you, she _needs_ you, Flynn!”

“You sound disappointed in me,” Flynn says, sounding awed and confused.

Wyatt’s running about twelve trains of thought right now and they all come crashing to a truly spectacular halt on top of one another. “Yeah,” he snaps. “Yeah, I am.”

“Why—”

“Because you’re supposed to be better than I am!” His skin feels too hot. “You were right, in D.C., what you read—if it was really in the journal, or not, whatever, but you were right. I was obsessed with Jess, it’s fuckin’ unhealthy, and—and you got it, and you’re—you’re me, in all the—but you’re not me, you’re better, you’re supposed to be better!”

It’s not until he finishes that he realizes how his voice is cracking and his eyes are stinging.

Flynn looks like he’s about to run off the rails himself. “You want to talk about doing bad things for good reasons?” His voice is the very definition of tormented. “I shot a child!”

His tone is hushed, but no less biting, and the words might as well be screamed, a whip crack.

“I shot. A child.” Flynn plants his hands on the table, leaning forward a bit, and it put their faces only a few inches apart, close enough that Wyatt can see the haggard, sallow color of his skin that means Flynn hasn’t been sleeping. “How am I supposed to be anything, to anyone, after that?”

“You don’t get to decide that,” Wyatt hisses. “Lucy needs you. Everyone’s left her, Flynn, and she thought you left her too, you have no idea what a mess she was!”

“I have…” Flynn stops, steps back, and then begins again. “I have some idea. From the—the journal.”

Wyatt stares at him. “You two were…”

“Actually, in the journal it was… you were the reason she was so upset. I assumed you two—”

“We’re not—”

“You said Jess divorced you.”

“Yeah. Yeah, but I’m. She. Lucy and I.” Wyatt struggles to swallow. “I mean she’s brilliant, and funny, and she sees the best in people and she’ll fight for anyone who shows even a shred of kindness and she’s open and warm and passionate—”

Flynn’s giving him a look, and Wyatt rubs at the back of his neck. “Yeah, I’m digging my own grave here, aren’t I.”

“Just a little bit.”

He shakes his head, like a dog getting rid of water. “We’re friends. And she didn’t want me, not really, she wants you. So whether you think you’re worthy of it or not, you can’t—don’t be a fucking martyr, okay?”

Flynn looks at him, one hand on his desk, the long fingers splayed, and something about that makes Wyatt feel like he’s been hypnotized. “Jess divorced you.”

“Yeah.”

“And you agreed to it?”

He shrugs. “What else was I supposed to do? Tell her about time travel? You—you said it yourself, or Lucy did, whatever, I’m obsessed with her. I’m… I’m trying to do what’s best for Jess, y’know? And you—you should do what’s best for Lucy.”

Flynn looks away, making a harsh noise that’s not quite a laugh. “What’s best for Lucy. You know what I did? I went and I saw my family. I saw them, and they didn’t see me. Because I can’t live with myself, Wyatt, how am I supposed to let someone else live with me if I can’t live with myself?”

Wyatt stares at Flynn, and Flynn stares at Wyatt, and Wyatt can’t help but think about how they both have wives they can’t go home to because they can’t tell them the impossible, painful truth, and how Flynn shot John to save Iris, and how they are both tied by their heartstrings to Lucy in ways that Wyatt doesn’t think either of them knows how to articulate.

“Grab a beer with me,” he says.

“What?” Flynn looks like Wyatt asked Flynn to go hot air ballooning with him, something lighthearted and a little weird and completely out of the blue.

“Come out and grab a drink with me. After work.”

“Are you proposing a truce?” The corner of Flynn’s mouth twitches upward, and it’s starving and wolfish, but it’s the closest thing to a smile Wyatt’s seen out of him in weeks.

“Yes.” For better or for worse. “Come out with me tonight.”

The way he phrases it sounds—it makes his face flush oddly, that’s all.

Flynn nods, just the once, and Wyatt’s skin prickles.

They go out somewhere local, somewhere neither of them have ever been before, and Flynn tells him about his trip. About seeing Lorena and Iris happy, about learning that he just vanished one night, about how they’ve had to make do without him all this time, thinking he was dead. He says he saw Stiv, and Wyatt has a horrible moment of regretting his entire existence as he learns that Stiv was the guy he killed in the Hindenburg, and that he was—well, is, now that his death has been undone—Flynn's surrogate brother.

"He was the older brother of my best friend," Flynn explains. "You know about—well, he kind of filled in the hole Gabriel—he was there for me. And after Matej died, we got even closer."

"At least you got to see him, then," Wyatt says, and tries not to let the guilt eat him up.

"I did, yeah. And you can stop trying to think of a way to kill yourself with the beer bottle, Wyatt, I forgave you for killing him months ago."

Wyatt tells him about Jess, and about the therapy. There’s a pool table, and Wyatt ends up getting his ass kicked on it by Flynn, who smirks at him with his snake eyes across the table, bent over a cue, and Wyatt’s heart thumps so loudly and painfully it makes him wince.

Neither of them brings up Lucy.

Somewhere around the third beer, Wyatt finds himself staring at Flynn’s hands—at his fingers as they slide up the pool cue, as they wrap around a bottle, as they drum against the bar top. He finds himself fascinated by the way Flynn’s collar is popped, by the way Flynn’s hair flops just a bit into his face, by the shadow of Flynn’s stubble.

He’s always hated Flynn. Hated him in an odd way that Wyatt can’t pin down or articulate. There’s just something in him that has burned from the start, and Wyatt called it _anger_ because he had to call it something and that was as good of a name as any.

Now, though, as they finally pay their tab and Flynn bumps their shoulders together while they wait for their taxi and he smells like whiskey and dark, secret things…

Wyatt wonders if it’s not hatred at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beginning part of Wyatt’s speech about doing bad things for good reasons was said by Eliot Spencer, taken from 5.02 of Leverage.


	6. Chapter 6

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit—

Rufus is not pleased to be picking up the phone at midnight, to say the least, but he does in fact pick up when Wyatt calls him. “Hey, buddy, what’s up?” he says in the tone of someone who means _you’d better be dying._

Wyatt can hear Jiya grumbling incoherently somewhere in the background and winces. “I, uh, I really need to talk to you.”

“Can it wait until tomorrow at work?”

Work? No. Flynn is at work. Flynn works with him. In fact he works under Flynn… under… directly under…

Oh God oh God oh God.

“No, no, it really—fuck, Rufus, can you just—I’ll come over or we can meet at a bar somewhere, I don’t know—”

Rufus sighs. “Wyatt, I am not putting clothes on at midnight to go meet you at some bar. Come over, we’ll talk.”

Wyatt’s never been to Rufus’s place before, in either timeline. It’s a shockingly nice apartment, and Wyatt has to take a moment to remember that oh yes, Rufus worked his way up the food chain and is the favorite of a billionaire, he definitely got Mason to co-sign on this apartment.

Rufus answers the door when he knocks, passing a cup of coffee into his hand. Wyatt stares at it. “Shouldn’t this be for you?”

“I know what you sound like when you’re tipsy, Wyatt, have the damn coffee.”

“I’m not… that drunk…” He takes a sip anyway. Holy shit this is good coffee. Not as good as the espressos that Flynn makes out of his fancy-ass machine in his office that he insisted Wyatt try and made Wyatt wonder if ‘foodgasms’ really were a thing after all but…

…oh God this is so bad, he’s in so deep.

“So, what’s so important that you can’t wait until tomorrow to tell me?” Rufus asks, sitting down on the couch. Wyatt notes that the bedroom door is firmly closed and resolves to keep his voice down. Rufus, he can handle. A sleep deprived Jiya? Not in his worst nightmares, thanks.

Wyatt sits down and takes a scalding hot gulp of coffee. When he speaks, it’s far too fast, like he’s on a timer and has to get it all out before the clock hits zero. “So I’m still in love with Jess but I think I’m also falling in love with Lucy and I went out with Flynn tonight because he was being an asshat just leaving Lucy like that but he also had it really rough so I figured y’know we’d just go out and take the edge off before he went home and saw her and I’m not sure but I’m pretty sure have you ever noticed that Flynn is really hot but I’m still getting used to not being with Jess and I just got divorced and I can’t forget how Lucy’s hair smells like strawberries.”

Rufus stares at him. Blinks. Then slowly gets up, walks into the kitchen, and pours himself a cup of coffee, muttering something about _not prepared for this_.

When he returns, he looks Wyatt straight in the eye. “Okay. Let’s start with the biggest thing. Jess.”

Wyatt nods, because Jess is good, Jess is normal territory, he can handle Jess. This he’s used to.

“Look, I’m not a therapist, okay? So I’m not good at the whole… letting you come to your own conclusions thing. But this whole idea of still being in love with Jess? Fuck that. Okay? Just. Fuck it.”

Wyatt’s used to Rufus’s snark and the fact that Rufus has no idea what subtlety means, but this is still like getting a sack of bricks directly to the face. “Um… thanks?”

Rufus sighs, and takes a long draught of coffee. “Jess died in 2012, right? It’s 2017. That’s five years. Five years that you spent loving someone who was dead. And before that your marriage was rough. So you spent all this time loving someone who could never fail you. Someone who never argued with you, or disagreed with you, or pissed you off, or was impatient or stubborn or petty or passive aggressive or thoughtless. All of our partners are perfect when they’re dead, Wyatt.

“And so you built up this perfect person in your head. And I never said anything, because I had my own shit I was going through and it wasn’t really my place, y’know? But when you talked about Jess—Lucy and I, we talked, after Bonnie and Clyde and—it worried us. Still does, a bit. It worries us how much you fixated on her and how you had her on this pedestal. Because the real Jess could never possibly measure up to the perfect one in your head. And that’s not fair to her or to you. She’s constantly feeling judged, and you’re constantly feeling disappointed. So yeah, dude, you’re not in love with Jess. You were once but now you’re just in love with the idea of her and you gotta cut that shit out and move on.”

Wyatt gapes at him—openly gapes at him, jaw dropped and everything. Rufus looks like a weight’s been lifted off his shoulders and takes a cheerful sip of coffee. “I had no idea how much I needed to say that,” he says, almost to himself.

Wyatt just barely resists the urge to flip him off.

Rufus raises his eyebrows after a few moments of silence have passed. “Well? Am I wrong?”

“You’re not wrong.” Wyatt feels like the kid who was caught causing a ruckus in kindergarten class and is now trying to pass it off as someone else’s work. “I… Flynn, and Lucy, both said something similar. And I don’t… it doesn’t feel right, yet. In my chest. But I’m hoping that it’ll feel right after a while. Because I don’t want to be that dick, I don’t.”

Rufus finishes his coffee and looks significantly at Wyatt’s mug still in his hand. Wyatt drinks up. “You’re not a total dick,” Rufus says. “But you’re even better when you just stop fucking worrying about what everyone’s going to see when they look at you and just do what feels right.”

“I don’t know what feels right anymore.” The words feel raw in his throat.

Rufus gets up, taking the coffee from him, and walks into the kitchen again. When he returns, he has a glass of water that he thrusts into Wyatt’s hands.

It soothes him, a bit.

“Y’know something that Jiya said to me once?”

“What?”

Rufus gives him one of those sly, cutting grins, the kind that precludes him saying something that Wyatt knows he’s going to hate. “She said that Wonderbread has more personality than you do.”

“Hey!”

“Dude. Think about it. You were a grunt in the army, you were a grunt in Delta. Jess got all of your personality, why else would you be so jealous and clinging to her so hard? Then she died and you were just a walking pile of guilt, and then you were just our soldier and our bodyguard. Now? Now you get to find out who Wyatt Logan is. Who he really is.” Rufus shrugs. “I think it’s a good thing.”

“It’s terrifying.” The words slide out before he can stop them. “Not knowing who I am.”

“Well yeah, it’s terrifying. Try being a poor black kid. I had to know who I was because the world was going to snatch it away from me otherwise. I was constantly wondering, am I giving into a stereotype? Am I trying too hard not to? Am I doing this right? Am I being a good example? And then once Mason was helping me… it only got harder. Was I betraying my background by going to fancy parties, or was I defying the poor black kid narrative? Which was it? It’s like—I’m trying to be soft and kind because I can’t be the angry black man, and I don’t want to be, but also I deserve to get angry sometimes. Which is it gonna be? What are you gonna be and what are you going to stand for? You have to decide at some point, Wyatt, and just because it might look different for you than it does for me doesn’t mean that there aren’t just as many of society’s rules trying to dictate your life for you. Figure out what those are and which you want to follow or they’ll play you like a puppet.”

Rufus paused to take a breath. “But that’s a conversation that I will leave up to your therapist, thanks.”

“Yeah, I appreciate that.”

Rufus gave him a crooked grin, and Wyatt couldn’t help but smile back, even if it felt like it was straining his face.

“And, hey, I can’t speak about, you know, the whole guy thing…”

It’s like he’s been punched in the sternum. And he has been punched there, thanks, so he knows what that feels like. “What?”

Rufus eyes him. “You went out with Flynn? You finally realized why you were so antagonistic towards him? It’s because you’ve been hate-eye-fucking this whole time?”

“I—what? We are not—that is not what we’ve been doing.”

“Wyatt, if eye fucking could get you pregnant, you’d’ve had triplets by now.”

Wyatt nearly spits his water out. “The fuck, man!?”

“You—”

“No. No, no, no.” They are not having this conversation. Okay, so maybe he thought that he felt—but that was when he was drunk, and now he is sober, thank you, and he is dealing with Jess and Lucy and himself, and he is not—men don’t—he doesn’t—no.

“I’m not like that,” he says, and Rufus gives him an absolute five-act Shakespearean play’s worth of facial expressions in the span of ten seconds.

“Okay,” Rufus says with the air of someone who has heard the telltale noises of their cat breaking something in the living room and decided that this is a problem for Tomorrow Rufus. “So. Lucy.”

The vice around Wyatt’s chest loosens. He feels like he’s been yanked out of concrete. “Lucy.”

“Not gonna lie, I’ve seen you getting all melty and googly eyed.”

“Thanks, I love how you describe me, makes me feel real mature.”

“Hey, you woke me up at midnight, man. Look, I think you and Lucy would be cute together, sure, but she’s trying to sort out whatever the hell she and Flynn are, and honestly, I think you need some time not being with anyone. Stop being a Wonderbread, Wyatt. Be the seven grain cranberry loaf I know you can be.”

“That was the worst fucking analogy.”

“It was a delicious analogy. I’m making toast.”

Wyatt accepted the toast that Rufus made—which was shockingly delicious, although that might have been his still-vaguely-tipsy-segueing-into-a-light-hangover brain talking. “So you think I should just… ignore whatever I’m feeling?”

“Focus on being her friend. And focus on figuring out who you are, just as yourself. Not as Master Sergeant. Not as Delta Force AK-whatever. Not as Jessica Logan’s husband or Jessica Logan’s widower. Just as Wyatt. Just as yourself.”

Rufus’s words still carry an edge of snark, but his eyes are dark and soft, and surprisingly compassionate, and the crumbs of the toast stick in Wyatt’s mouth and throat as he meets Rufus’s gaze.

“Okay,” he croaks.

Rufus nods.

Wyatt helps clean up the dishes, all in total silence, because he doesn’t know if any of their talk woke Jiya and waking Jiya in the middle of the night is, Rufus informs him, “playing Russian Roulette with five bullets and only one empty chamber.”

They hug, and Wyatt thanks him, and thinks that hey, okay, maybe this wasn’t too bad. It was a bit of a breakdown, but not a major one. He can get through this.

“Hey, Wyatt?” Rufus adds, when his hand is on the doorframe and Wyatt’s just stepping out.

“Yeah?”

Rufus stares him down. “You know that if you did. If you were like that.” Wyatt can practically hear the air quotes. “It’d be okay, right? None of us are going to look at you any differently. Or care, really.”

The image of Flynn’s fingers—on the pool cue, wrapped around a beer bottle—flashes through his mind and Wyatt has a wave of dizziness that nearly sends him crashing to the floor.

“I’m not, though,” he says. “So it doesn’t matter.”

For the first time since he knocked on the door, Rufus looks disappointed. “Whatever you say, buddy,” he replies, and then the door is sliding shut.

And Wyatt—Wyatt heads back to the small, empty, shitty apartment he’s renting, and tries not to think about anything at all.

Especially not Flynn.

 

* * *

 

She’s mindlessly scrolling through the syllabus for the fall on her laptop in the living room when she hears the key in the lock.

Lucy shoves her laptop aside, where it nearly falls off the couch and onto the hardwood floor, and jumps to her feet just as the door swings open and—and—

“You’re here,” Lucy blurts out.

Flynn stares at her. “Of course I’m here.”

Of course? Of course!? As if he hadn’t just—as if—why—

Lucy is very tempted to find a stool or something so that she can be at his eye level while she smacks him. Flynn looks… well, like shit, honestly. He’s carrying his jacket, so he’s just in his dress shirt with the collar open and his tie loosened, the whole thing wrinkled all to hell. His hair is a mess, he hasn’t shaved in a couple of days, and the bags under his eyes would count as checked luggage instead of carry-on at the airport.

Unfortunately, Flynn’s ‘looks like shit’ is still better than most men’s ‘well put-together’ and Lucy very determinedly ignores the hot flip in her stomach at seeing him again in the flesh. His presence fills up the entire apartment, reminding her again of how large and empty the place felt without him.

“I was going to come back,” Flynn says, still in that _of course_ tone of voice that makes her want to strangle him. Not to death, just until he turns a little blue and has time to regret his life choices. “I… I said I’d be back.”

Lucy’s fingers and toes are tingling, and not in the sexy anticipatory way but like she’s dipped them in lava. “I’m not even all that sure what you said, given that you mumbled it out while you packed in a rush and then fled.”

Flynn has enough grace to look abashed by this, his face flushing a trifle. “I… I thought—it had nothing to do with you.” He sets his luggage down and drapes his jacket over the armchair.

“Mmm, you sure about that? Because last I checked, we were in this together. Together! I don’t—I don’t want your pity or your charity—” Her voice has a dangerous edge to it, one that could just as easily cut her as it does him. “—and if you don’t want to stay, then don’t stay! But don’t—don’t do this!”

“Do what!?”

“Move in with me and then not even touch me, not even talk to me, barely look at me and when you do it’s out of the corner of your eye like I’m a ghost you have to entertain! I’m not made of glass, I’m not going to break, you never acted like I would break before. You—you challenged me, you looked me right in the eyes, nobody had ever talked to me like that, like I could take it, and I found—I found in talking to you that I _could_ take it, after all, I could be strong, and now—now it’s all gone and you’re like everyone else and you were supposed to be different!”

It’s midnight, and the neighbors probably have a few thoughts of their own about this yelling they’re hearing, but Lucy doesn’t give a damn. Flynn is looking at her like… oddly enough, like he’s experiencing déjà vu.

“It seems,” he says, speaking carefully, his voice low, “that people had much higher expectations of me than I expected. Given… given my actions.”

Just like that—it’s like she’s a puppet, and her strings have been cut. She sinks down onto the couch. She doesn’t want to move for a century. “I don’t care what your actions are anymore.” Her voice is as small and shaking now as it was cutting and hard a moment ago. “I just want you to pick something. Leave, and go be with your family, or go somewhere else, even, I don’t care. Or stay here and be with me, properly.” Oh, that phrasing is dangerous. “Be my friend, properly.”

“That’s what you want?” Flynn asks. “For me to be your friend?”

She wants… she wants… oh, God, he can’t ask her that right now. It’s a dangerous question. It’s handing her gasoline and a match while she’s standing in the middle of a dry forest.

“I want you to touch me,” she says at last, after the silence has started to actively smother her. “Nobody touches me anymore.”

“All right.”

Part of her hates him agreeing so easily. _Fight me!_ she wants to scream. Fight me, you yanked me into the ring and drew blood and I want that again. She fell for the wolf, not the lapdog, and she hasn’t earned his domestication yet. “I want you to be here. Here, really here. Not half somewhere else. Not with your foot out the door. Not treating me like I’m going to fall apart. Because I will sometimes, but so does everyone. I’m not… I’m still me.”

Flynn walks to her carefully, like there’s broken glass on the floor and he’s barefoot. “Nothing could erase you.”

“And yet.” She makes a vague gesture in the air.

“You hid a bottle of vodka under your bed,” Flynn says. “You talked about it in the journal. It was because… in that timeline it was because of Amy, and then you and Wyatt had a fight, and nobody knew about it until it was almost too late.”

She knows, then, that he knows. “Wyatt told you.”

“Yelled at me, more like. Told me I was… doing wrong by you.”

“It’s not his place to tell you how to treat me.”

“No, but it’s the job of a friend to point out when another friend is hurting you.” Flynn’s eyes look almost blue in this light. “I went home to see my family.”

Oh. Of course he did. Of course. “Are they okay?”

“They’re fine. They’re happy.” Flynn sits down in the armchair, his elbow on his knee, putting himself on her level. He’s always done that, she thinks deliriously. Put himself on her level, or tried to raise her up to his. One or the other. “I saw my close friend. We talked. I didn’t tell Lorena I was alive.”

“You walked away.” Like he said he would, when they were standing by the horses.

That was the first moment she… she’s not blind, all right, and she’s noticed how Flynn fills out his suits. He does look especially dashing in a cravat. But that was the first time she’d let herself look. The first time she had allowed herself to actively think, _yes, he’s handsome._

She can’t help but think it now, even as wrecked as he looks, and she tries to lock the thought away but she still burns.

“I did,” Flynn confirms. “I couldn’t—the man they knew and loved is dead. I can’t be him for them anymore.”

“What about for yourself?”

Flynn gives a dry, silent chuckle. “I guess I’ll have to figure that out.”

“With me.” Lucy moves until she’s perched on the very edge of the couch, their knees nearly brushing. “You either pack your things and leave or you stay and you stay for good, Garcia Flynn.”

He finally breaks their gaze. “I thought you would want… that I was… hovering. That you would need space.”

“Did I say I needed space?” She is standing in an instant, ablaze with anger all over again. She can feel her eyes, her heart, her lungs, all burning.

Flynn stares up at her, like a man seeing an angel and realizing that there is a reason they all spoke to mortals first with _be not afraid_.

“I didn’t,” Lucy hisses. “My mother assumed she knew what was best for me, Denise assumed she knew what was best for me, Wyatt assumed he knew what was best for me, everyone assumes they know and nobody asks me and I won’t have it, not from you!”

Flynn must stand, somehow, but she doesn’t note the motion, only that he is now towering over her again and his hands are at her shoulders. “Then you won’t. Lucy. I’m sorry. You won’t.”

She hates that she’s crying. It feels like that’s all she knows how to do anymore. And Flynn—oh God, at last, he pulls her in, and tucks her into his chest, and each breath in feels like a thousand shards of glass but he’s holding her and letting her cling to him and get his shirt all wet and she wants him so badly she can’t even think but she also just wants to stay like this for a decade.

“I won’t ever leave,” Flynn promises. “If you don’t want me to, Lucy, I won’t leave again. I’m here.”

They’re standing in their apartment on a Tuesday in the middle of San Francisco, and yet, it also feels like they are standing at the end of all things, and Lucy breaks, and Flynn lets her.

Minutes, years, an age later, she pulls back enough to tip her head up and rest her chin on his chest. Flynn keeps his arms around her, his eyes dark with concern as he stares back down at her. He really does look a mess, like he sprinted all the way from the east coast to get here, but Lucy is sure she looks no better, so that’s all right then.

“I’ve never lied to you,” Flynn says, and she knows, she knows, his honesty is brutal and blunt but also kind and it’s all she can depend on. “And I’m not lying now. As long as you need me, I’ll stay.”

They are still entwined, and his eyes are entrancing, and she’s missed him terribly and he’s very solid and real under her fingers, and it’s terrible timing and yet…

Flynn’s gaze flicks down to her mouth, there and gone, so quick she thinks she might have imagined, it—and then she is sure she imagined it, because he’s stepping back, undoing her arms from around him.

“You should sleep,” he tells her, and his voice is so gentle it rattles her.

“Speak for yourself,” she replies. “Did you go straight to work from the airport?”

“Something like that,” he says, and it’s normal, and not normal, and she wants to laugh and scream and cry all at once.

But she does none of those things, and instead takes Flynn’s advice and goes to bed, because she needs it—and because he promised he would stay.

 

* * *

 

He nearly kissed her.

Flynn slips into his bathroom after helping Lucy to bed, undoing his clothing with shaking fingers and taking a quick shower, scrubbing the airport and exhaustion from his skin. He needs a shave but his hands are too unsteady for that right now. He could ask Lucy—

No. No, to have her so close, touching him so intimately, it will unmake him. There is a poetic irony in the idea of giving Lucy a blade and trusting her to run it across his throat without hurting him, and he can see it so clearly in his mind’s eye, him kneeling before her as her dark, cool gaze catches his and the blade runs against his throat, that it makes him burn and ache.

He can’t—he can’t. He just hurt her by abandoning her, even if he didn’t realize she would see it that way, he can’t take advantage of her vulnerable state. She needs a friend and she depends on him, and he’s honored. He can’t violate that.

When she was in his arms, though, he was so tempted. She was looking up at him, holding him, letting him hold her—needing him to hold her, and he’d—he had never been so tempted to do anything in his whole life.

But he didn’t. He shouldn’t. He won’t.

He gets into his boxers and does something he hasn’t done in a long time.

He pulls Lucy’s journal out of his top drawer.

The contents are written on his heart by now. But it still gives him comfort to read the words, to see her handwriting. To know that once, there was a Lucy who loved him. That he was once worthy of her love.

_He kisses me so softly. It breaks and remakes me all at once._

He would kiss her like that if he could. If he’s even capable of making her feel that way. He’s not sure.

It’s a unique kind of torture, reading these passages. Knowing what they say and knowing that he can never have this. Not in this timeline, and now not in any other. He has destroyed Rittenhouse and along with it destroyed any chance of redeeming himself and becoming a man worthy of her.

He will never say this to Lucy out loud. He will never burden her with this confession. But ever since he read the journal he hoped, in his heart of hearts, that he could be with her. His family, he knew he would walk away, even as it tore his heart out, because they could never accept the darkness he drew into himself, and why should they? But Lucy—Lucy did.

_Flynn says he can’t be a father again but he can, he can, I know he can. He wants it so badly, I know that he does, and I want that with him. He just has to learn how to accept it again. He’s broken but so am I and our broken pieces fit together better than he thinks._

Somehow, she saw his darkness and fought through it and brought him back. At least in that timeline. And so he’d hoped… he’d hoped…

_He took me into his arms and kissed me. And I felt safe, and protected, and loved._

It’s hard to breathe, reading these words.

From what he can gather, reading the journal, the timeline went roughly like this: he saved Lucy from her car crash, which somehow led to them getting on the trail of Rittenhouse sooner. But they were still losing. His family still dies, retaliation from Rittenhouse. He goes on the run to São Paulo, still. That’s how Lucy of the journal knew where he’d be. Details are fuzzy, but in that timeline… they’d been fighting Rittenhouse for almost two decades.

There’s other details. Details that shocked him in unexpected ways, when he read them. Wyatt learned the truth about Jess’s killer—there’s not much on it, other than a name, Wes Gilliam.

Somehow, learning the truth about Jess and avenging her led to Wyatt and Flynn… well.

_Wyatt kisses Flynn like he’s finally found what he’s been looking for, and it’s not at all what he expected, but exactly what he needed._

Flynn isn’t sure what to do with this part of the journal. He would have told Wyatt in D.C. if he’d thought that there was a chance in hell that Wyatt would take it well, but he suspects denial would be the name of Wyatt’s game and he doesn’t need to add even more problems on top of the ones he’s already got.

_I woke up and found that Wyatt kicked all the blankets off again, but it was all right because Flynn was plenty warm underneath me. And I thought—at least for a moment, I get to be happy._

The moments of happiness in the journal are increasingly few and far between, though. They’re losing the war, and more than that—

_Mason says it happens to astronauts who are up in space for too long. All I know is that I hurt all over. It’s like gravity works so much more strongly on me than it used to. Like it’s pulling my bones apart. We’re all on painkillers constantly. I wake up in pain in the middle of the night. It’s even worse for Flynn and Wyatt, they have old war wounds to deal with already._

He needs to find a time to talk to Mason about that. If they don’t find a way to counteract that, then anyone who time travels for too long is signing an excruciating death warrant. But they’ve all been through enough already. Flynn wants… he just wanted them all to get a little more settled before dropping this bomb on them and dragging them all in for tests. Give Lucy, especially, a moment to breathe.

_I can’t._

It’s the last part of the journal.

_I can’t, Flynn, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t._

The part where he dies.

Lucy’s writing becomes messy, breaking down, his name repeated over and over like a prayer. A mantra. He doesn’t know what Wyatt thought about the whole thing, but from what it sounds like, from what little Lucy writes, the whole team fractures. Flynn’s death was the breaking point.

And so Lucy goes back in time. Travels on her own timeline, even though she knows it might literally destroy her or render her insane.

Flynn suspects, since he doesn’t recall saving Lucy in 2003 (and he knows he would remember it if he did) that Rittenhouse messed with that part of the timeline somehow. Stanley, the pilot who went insane, or maybe George, another Lifeboat pilot who went quietly home one night and blew his brains out, either one of them could have been conscripted to do it, traveling on their own timeline to save Lucy. Rittenhouse’s way of preventing an earlier meeting.

And so the journal is brought to São Paulo. For some reason, journal Lucy felt that was the best time to deliver it. Flynn doesn’t know why, and the journal doesn’t explain. Lucy never told him when they… when she gave it to him.

Flynn runs his fingers over the journal’s leather cover, down the spine.

_Garcia brings me coffee in the mornings, and I won’t ever tell him this because he’ll blush and avoid looking me in the face for days but… his smile wakes me up more than the caffeine does. I wish he would smile more._

He reaches up and touches his mouth. He isn’t sure he even remembers how to smile. Grimace, smirk, snarl, yes. But smile?

He thinks he might have smiled while out with Wyatt tonight. If someone had said that what he needed was to get slightly buzzed and play pool with the man he had, until recently, been punching more than speaking to, he would’ve thought that person had a gone a few too many rounds with Jose Cuervo. And yet… that’s exactly what happened. Wyatt’s amusing, adorable, even, when he lets himself relax and get all loose instead of snarling and snapping like someone’s going to try and humiliate him at the earliest opportunity.

Flynn has long thought that Wyatt has something to hide. Or a few somethings. Maybe it’s what was talked about in the journal. Maybe it’s something else, or something more on top of that. He’s not sure. But Wyatt is so hard, and so wound up, and so defensive. It makes it impossible for anyone to truly get close to him.

But tonight, Wyatt was… fun. Genuinely fun. They played pool, and Wyatt’s damn good, it was a close game. They made fun of the sports on the television. Shot the breeze about the war, taking care to avoid the darker parts and just complaining about the minutiae, swapping funny stories, because people are people are there are funny stories to share even in the middle of a war. Humor is everywhere. Even in the gallows.

Flynn enjoyed himself.

So yes, perhaps he smiled then. He really doesn’t know. But if he tries—in the mirror—it’s like watching a ghost leering. He can’t quite manage it.

_I wish he would smile more._

The Lucy of the journal wanted him to be happy. Does this one want that as well?

She wants his friendship, his companionship, if nothing else. She does want that, and he will give it to her. It’s something at least and far more than he deserves after what he’s done. Even if he did it for good reasons. For his family. For all of history.

For her.

Flynn shoves the journal back into the drawer and hates himself for reading it again. He doesn’t deserve to. He doesn’t deserve her, Wyatt, them, a life, any of it.

He told Wyatt—asked Wyatt, rather—how he was supposed to be anything to anyone, after what he’d done.

And he really does want to know the answer. He hates himself, God he hates himself, so much it’s like hot poison, like a cancerous growth in his chest that he can feel as it moves about, strengthening, destroying his cells.

Don’t presume to take more than you’re offered, Garcia, he tells himself. Lucy is giving him friendship and letting him help her, support her, and if he can’t stand himself, well, at least he can be there for her and make that his purpose until he can figure out how to somehow, maybe, someday, look himself in the eye again.

He nearly kissed her. That can't happen again. She is tempting, so tempting, and to have her in his arms is both Heaven and Hell all at once. To be so tantalizingly close to what he can't have, the river just out of reach to quench his thirst, the fruit just beyond his fingertips to sate his hunger. But he has done so much already to steal from her. He took Amy by accident, and then took her again once more when he erased the entire Rittenhouse, and therefore Preston, line from history. He took Carol. He took Lucy herself, her life, her identity.

A more thorough form of destruction he has not yet discovered.

He does not deserve to kiss her after that. And she would not want it if he tried. The Lucy of the journal is not the same as the Lucy he knows, she has made that clear from the beginning. Flynn admires her independence and her claiming of her identity, her refusal to bow to another version of herself. It's one of the may reasons he respects her so deeply. But it also means that he can't presume—he robbed her very soul.

To kiss her, or presume anything at all, after that would be a violation.

And yet. She asked for him to stay. Made him promise. He will hold to that. He owes it to her. He owes her his word, his honor, and his companionship. He took all her companions from her. The least he can do now, if she so desires it, is do all he can to fill the gaps. Even if will do a piss-poor job of it (in his own estimation, at least).

He knows he should give her the journal, especially now that it’s all said and done, but. It’s all he has left, really. All that remains of his hope and the man he used to be and the man he wanted to become—and the woman he had dreamed of standing beside.

Flynn determinedly closes the drawer and lies in bed, but he doesn’t sleep.

Not until dawn is creeping over the horizon.

 

* * *

 

She tries to have some kind of dignity.

No, really, she does.

But there’s only so long she can go getting all hot and bothered by Flynn doing things like making her breakfast and putting up shelves in the living room (he is, she suspects, strongly motivated by guilt here and is doing his best to make it up to her, and she is not complaining about getting pancakes every morning) before she has to do something about it.

Ironically, sex has never been something she feels shame about. She fucked Noah twice, and it wasn’t half bad, before she asked for him to move out. Because not-half-bad sex is one thing, but not-half-bad sex when your partner is in love with you and being all sensual and romantic about it while you are… not… yeah, that’s an entirely different thing altogether.

Hell, she’s even given fucking Wyatt a brief thought, before Bonnie and Clyde and staring full in the face the truth about Wyatt’s continued devotion to Jess. Wyatt’s got that pretty, soft look that she wants to tie up and boss around. But she’s not about to get into the middle of that Jess mess, no sir, and then they were teaming up with Flynn and she talked with him at the horses and…

Well. If she’s not going to fuck a guy who’s still in love with his dead wife (now not dead but… one thing at a time) she’s not going to fuck a guy who’s dealing with the Gordian Knot of emotions that Flynn’s been juggling.

So she’s not—even if she thought that Flynn would want her, and she’s convinced he doesn’t—except—well the other night—

He was looking at her like he might kiss her. And she can’t get it out of her head, no matter how hard she tries.

Even if he did, does, want to kiss her, or do anything (don’t think about it, she tells herself, firmly, don’t give yourself hope where there is none), it wouldn’t be right, not when he just got back from seeing Lorena and Iris, not when he just had to walk away from them.

So she is trying, so hard, Lucy is _trying_ , to maintain her dignity and just ignore whatever thought she might be having but it’s difficult, okay, it’s difficult.

Which is why she’s currently in the shower.

The water’s hot, sliding down her body, and it’s not human touch but it’s close, it’s more than she’s going to get from anyone else in the near future.

She braces her hand on the wall and tips her head back, focuses on the drops sliding down her throat. She’s never seen Flynn in anything more casual than his sweatpants and soft t-shirts, but she’s got imagination to spare. The broad shoulders she could run her hands over, the height difference putting her at the perfect position to bite lightly at a nipple as his hands slide over her back and down her stomach, lower, between her thighs…

Lucy’s never exactly thought of herself as having a type when it comes to men other than ‘willing to get in his knees and call her ma’am’. She’s never thought much about height, or hair color, or so on. But right now all she can think about is how very much taller than her Flynn is, and how easily he could lift her against the wall, and she bites her lip as she tries to imagine how thick he is. She’s gotten enough of a look at the way his pants fit him to have a pretty good guess.

It’s been so long and she knows she’d need some time, she’d need those long fingers inside of her working her over and over, stroking and scissoring, stretching her as his thumb worked her clit, rubbing in circles until she whimpered and clawed at his shoulders and begged.

Her own fingers are so much slimmer and shorter and it’s not nearly the same thing. She knows how to touch herself, but she would almost prefer Flynn, with his lack of knowledge, because he’d be so eager to learn and to follow her orders, she can tell—and she so wants to gasp out directions, to tell him _there_ and _more_ and _harder_. She wants him to have no mercy. She wants him to make her come, and kiss her through it, and then to slide inside of her and fuck her until she comes again, until she’s moaning and not sure if she can possibly handle another orgasm—and then he makes her come again. One last time. She likes being in charge but oh, _oh_ , she wants to be overwhelmed.

And out of anyone, Flynn, Flynn knows she can take it. Doesn’t he? He must know, she’s taken everything he’s thrown at her and lobbed it right back. She can take it, she wants to take it—her fingers speed up inside her as she grasps at her breasts, massages them, pinches and rolls her nipples—she wants to bite at his neck until there’s a pretty bruise right over his pulse point, she wants her lips swollen and tender from his kisses, she wants—oh, oh, oh God she—she wants—she wants him—

Lucy spills over her fingers, down her wrist, and slumps back against the tile, the water quickly washing the sweat and slick off her skin.

Her skin is red, but only from the heat of the water and the pinching of her own fingers. There are no love bites. The tingle of her orgasm is pleasant, mightily so, but not nearly as much as it would be if Flynn was the one giving it to her.

 _I want him._ It is the first time she’s thought it directly. _I want Garcia. I want him._

She stays in the shower until her chest stops heaving and she’s scrubbed her skin pink all over, as if he might somehow sense what she’s done.

When Flynn arrives from work that evening, she’s clean and her hair is only a little damp, wearing new clothes, and making quesadillas. He smiles at her, and heat slides down her throat and into her stomach, between her legs, all over again.

This living situation just got a lot more frustrating.


	7. Chapter 7

It takes him three days to give her the journal.

He almost gives it to her several times, but each time… he pulls back. He can’t fathom why at first, but then he realizes that it’s because he’s scared. And Flynn’s not a coward. But this this… this is all that he has of the other Lucy. The Lucy who told him he was a hero, who looked at him with affection in her eyes, the Lucy who loved him.

And, well, it’s rather embarrassing to hand someone a journal that another timeline’s version of them wrote that also records the, uh, rather mature episodes between yourself and that person. The other Lucy didn’t spare the details.

After three days of pacing back and forth, of swallowing his words, of looking into her eyes and feeling his courage fail him, he just ends up leaving it out on the coffee table when he wakes up before her in the morning.

Lucy walks out wearing the big red hoodie that he bought her to replace the one she lost (because all of her clothes were gone, naturally, since she does not exist to wear them) and her flannel pajama pants, rubbing at her eyes. Her hair is a bit of a rat’s nest and she’s shuffling more than walking properly, looking absolutely furious that the sun has dared to show its disgraceful face. He loves her to absolute distraction.

He thought he loved the other Lucy, the Lucy of the journal, but as much as she made him ready to love this Lucy… they aren’t the same people. And it’s different to love someone when you’re just reading their thoughts. You get to know them deeply, but they don’t know anything of you. It’s one-sided, and so there is only so deep it can go. And when he was all alone and had no one and nothing but his hope in her to rely on, of course he loved that version of her.

But this Lucy, the one who argues with him and stands up to him, who calls him out on his bullshit, who sees good in him still, somehow… this Lucy has things that he couldn’t have known from the journal. Like how she snorts when she laughs. How she steals his food from his plate, even if it’s the same food on her own, because it ‘tastes better’. How she sings along to John Denver at the top of her lungs (if he never has to hear _Country Roads_ again, it’ll be too soon). She’s imperfect, and flawed, and she’s so much better than the journal could ever have made her out to be.

Lucy shuffles out into the living room, sees the journal on the coffee table, and freezes.

Flynn determinedly keeps his eyes on the bacon he’s frying.

Lucy moves like she’s in a trance, sitting down on the edge of the couch and slowly, through molasses, reaches her hand out.

“You should have it,” Flynn says, once she has grasped the journal in her hand. “It’s yours, after all. It was… I shouldn’t have kept it so long. I was going to give it to you, once… it was all over but…”

Lucy takes the journal into her lap and runs her hand over the cover. “I had almost forgotten about it,” she whispers.

Soon she’ll know what’s written in there. Soon she’ll know about them.

He flips the bacon. “You deserve to read it. It’s yours.”

Lucy nods, her lips pressed together. He can’t see her eyes, her hair falling just so to hide it from him. He’s not sure if he’s grateful for that or not.

“There is one thing in there that I have to tell you right out.” He turns off the burner and starts sliding the bacon onto the paper towels to get rid of the extra grease. “There was a bad side effect to the time travel.”

Lucy looks up. “What do you mean?”

That’s how they end up at Mason Industries with Anthony, Rufus, and Wyatt. Wyatt looks like he has been operating on no sleep for the last three days, which concerns Flynn a little. He went out with Wyatt to a bar, was that the right thing to do while Wyatt’s going through a divorce? Does Wyatt have an alcohol problem? Not that he can recall from the journal, Wyatt went cold turkey after the whole time travel thing since he already gets sick enough riding the time machine.

Flynn’s… taken aback by his own level of… worry about all this. Wyatt’s not a bad guy but he’s frustrating, stubborn, aggravating, irritating, stuck in his ways…

And Flynn, despite himself, does truly care.

Anthony seems to be torn between panic and fascination, Mason is firmly on the side of fascination, and Rufus would just like to know how many years he has left, thanks. They all have to go into a room and strip down, then get scanned in what looks like an MRI scanner but with some weird looking appendages that Flynn really doesn’t want to think about.

It’s miserable lying in an MRI scanner. There’s this awful, loud, repetitive _ka-chunk_ noise that goes on and on for what feels like years. It’s not good for people with claustrophobia, and Flynn worries about Lucy, who’s getting hers done in another room as the only woman. Is she all right? Can she breathe? Is she—

The noise stops abruptly and Flynn realizes that he’s breathing too fast, too sharply. He forces himself to slow down.

He’s wheeled out, and nods to Mason, who’s observing along with some doctors. “We’ll have to look over the scans in the lab,” Mason says. “We’re detecting for… I’m not even sure what. But it’ll probably be trace amounts. And we’ll cross reference it against the scans we get from the others, and then—”

“Mason, I’m standing in a stupid hospital gown and my degree is in sarcasm, not medicine or biology, could we maybe wrap this up?”

“Right, of course.” Mason mutters something about _cheeky bugger_ and _was he this much trouble in the other timeline_.

Flynn rolls his eyes and goes back into the changing room…

…where Wyatt and Rufus are arguing.

“That’s a ridiculous stereotype,” Rufus is saying. “Do you even know how to google? Fuck’s sake google that shit—”

“I am not googling anything—” Wyatt is only wearing his jeans and is using his t-shirt to gesture.

On a completely random note, Rufus is also shirtless and surprisingly jacked. Flynn sends his mental compliments to Jiya.

“Gentlemen.” That machine gave him a headache, Lucy might be having a panic attack over said machine right now, and he’s kind of worried about the possibility of his bones fusing together and giving him chronic pain for the rest of his life. He could do without this. “Do you mind having this somewhere I’m not?”

Rufus mutters something, drops his jeans, and walks across the room. Flynn rolls his eyes up to the ceiling to make it perfectly clear that he’s not impressed by Rufus’s lack of being impressed.

It’s a game that he and Rufus play now. Pretending to be annoyed with each other.

He grabs his clothes and rips off the hospital gown. Ugh. He hates these things. He’s spent enough time under the knife thanks to various war injuries that he’s not scared of hospitals but he’s not exactly filled with happy memories regarding them, either.

Wyatt takes one look at Flynn and freezes. Deer in the headlights.

“Didn’t think age had been that unkind,” Flynn says, shaking out his jeans.

“I—I wasn’t—” Wyatt looks like he is actively wondering if he can twist his shirt into a noose and hang himself with it.

“Jesus, Wyatt, breathe, I’m kidding. But I loved the look of abject horror on your face.”

Wyatt continues to stare at him, like he’s forgotten how to turn away, forgotten that’s a thing he can actually do. “What’s that scar from?” he asks, his voice oddly tight and rough.

Flynn looks down at his torso. “War for independence. It was… the blast caught me in the side.”

It was the blast that killed Matej.

Wyatt looks away quickly, fiddling with the button of his jeans. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s all right.” Flynn catches a glimpse of Wyatt’s back, a back that’s smooth—free of scarring.

In the journal, Wyatt had a back littered with shrapnel scars from a blast in Mason Industries. He was in bed for weeks, grumpy at being out of commission. Lucy would run her fingers over the scars at night while whispering with Flynn.

Wyatt seems to catch Flynn looking—he must—because his face goes pink.

Heat spreads through Flynn’s chest, slow and certain, like warm honey, and now he’s the one wondering if he should look away.

Wyatt clears his throat. “I should. I should go. Um. Mason wants us all to draw blood and, uh, y’know, I always faint when that happens so…”

“Aw, need me to hold your hand?”

Wyatt glares at him but his face gets even pinker. “I think I’ll manage,” he says, his voice sounding rougher than sandpaper. Oh, he’s easy to tease. Flynn could have fun with that. With getting Wyatt worked up.

He turns away and steps into his pants, making his mind carefully blank. He’s deeply, stupidly in unrequited love with Lucy, he just said goodbye to his wife and child (again), he doesn’t need to go lusting after Wyatt on top of it all.

Wyatt, of all people, certainly wouldn’t want that. No matter what the journal says. The man’s a mess and a half.

Flynn finishes putting on his clothes, and when he turns back, Wyatt is determinedly staring at a random spot on the wall.

 _Look at me_ , he can hear himself growl in his head, he can hear it, he can see the shiver Wyatt would give, the way Wyatt’s eyes would go wide and dark, his lips parting as he complied…

Flynn stalks past Wyatt, shoes in his hand. “If you’re very good and don’t faint, they give you a cookie.”

“Fuck off, Flynn,” Wyatt replies, but there’s no heat in his voice, and when Flynn glances back, Wyatt’s fighting down a smile.

 

* * *

 

Lucy doesn’t mean to avoid Emma, or Jiya, or Jess, or anyone, even Rufus and Wyatt, but… it’s hard. It’s hard to step back out into the world again. Her apartment feels safe, like the only world that she needs, the only one that exists, and Flynn is solicitous and he’s actually stopped avoiding her.

Well, after avoiding her for a few days after giving her the journal, he’s stopped. She’s done her best not to be… well. It’s hard not to change in her behavior towards him, now that she’s read what’s inside. Now that she knows what they once were to each other.

The parts about Wyatt and Flynn, now those give her pause. Not because she finds anything wrong with it. In fact, the idea of having both men like that… in her bed, doing what she says, their mouths on each other, their hands on her… it’s quite a lot of fun to imagine. But she never would’ve thought, despite Wyatt’s painfully obvious crush on Ian Fleming, that he would ever have admitted to those feelings or allowed himself to do anything about them. Wyatt is a good person at heart but he is also, bless him, a white man from middle America who was in the army for a decade. Lucy’s expectations are, understandably, low.

She supposes that a lot of things were different in the first timeline. Better. Except…

Except that in that timeline, Flynn died, and that was her breaking point. She traveled back on her own timeline, risked insanity or worse, even with a body that was already in pain and breaking down on her, she risked even more pain than that, to bring the journal to Flynn. Flynn, the one person she trusted to go up against Rittenhouse and have a proper chance.

It makes sense. Why São Paulo, why that particular day, she doesn’t know. But giving it to Flynn, that sounds right.

Knowing what she once had, and how losing it drove her to the most desperate of lengths, only makes her yearn that much more for the Flynn in front of her. She could have Wyatt at any moment. She knows that, somehow, in her bones. Wyatt is easy. But she won’t have him without Flynn. And she suspects that if she were to try, it wouldn’t work. It would leave something empty inside of both of them, something they’d cling to each other all that much harder to try and fill, a hunger that only fed itself until they destructed and destroyed everything good they’d once shared between them.

Flynn, though.

He’s stopped avoiding her, and now he curls up with her on the couch. She’s fallen asleep with her head on his lap, watching old movies, and sometimes when she’s dozing like that, right on the edge of the cliff about to fall into a deeper sleep, she thinks she feels his fingers carding through her hair. Gently working out the tangles. He makes her breakfast and will go on long walks with her when he gets home from work in the evenings. When he sees her upset, he asks her—haltingly, carefully—if she would like a hug, and when she nods, he holds her until she pulls away.

It. Is. Maddening.

She knows what they had, and Flynn’s read the journal so he knows what they had, but God forbid he actually make some kind of move about it. God forbid he ever respond to her hints that she’d like to take things beyond the platonic.

Driving herself crazy can only do so much, and so she finally caves, and she calls Emma, and she asks if Emma is free for lunch. Jiya is, unfortunately, going out on a very important lunch to meet Rufus’s mother and brother for the first time, otherwise she’d come along too, and Lucy wishes her good luck even though she doesn’t see how there’s any chance that Rufus’s family won’t love Jiya. Everyone loves Jiya. They’re all just slightly scared of her, but they love her.

Emma suggests a place by Mason Industries, and to Lucy’s relief it’s not one of the hipster vegan deconstructed places that infest San Francisco and Silicon Valley like a plague. It’s a mom and pop Korean place, bustling with people, and Lucy is, admittedly, slightly intimidated by the menu until Emma helps her out.

“I was beginning to think I’d scared you and you’d never call,” the redhead in question notes as they sit down.

“I’m sorry.”

Emma’s eyebrows shoot up. “Don’t apologize, it was just a joke. I’m not hurt at all.”

Lucy winces. She’s used to apologizing for a lot—thanks, Mom—and it’s kind of her default. “I have been kind of avoiding you, though. And everyone else. It’s been… difficult.”

Emma nods. “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through. This could be a good thing, though. You can start over new. Be whoever you want to be. Without all the family expectations or the past weighing you down.”

“You sound like you speak from experience.”

“I believe in seizing every opportunity that you get. And that if you see something that isn’t working, you find a way to fix it. Take advantage of what’s in front of you instead of turning away from it just because it’s not perfect.”

Lucy can admire that. She’s not sure if it’s a philosophy that she can adopt herself, but, it’s admirable. Emma strikes her as the kind of woman who doesn’t let anything get in the way of what she wants, doesn’t let the opinion of anyone else influence her, and Lucy is suddenly, blindingly, green-tinged-vision envious of her for it.

“I should’ve been more like that,” she admits, with no small amount of bitterness in her voice.

“You got to time travel, I don’t think you should regret too much.” Emma’s tone is light, warm, trying to raise her spirits, and Lucy appreciates it, but…

“Yeah, I got to time travel, but it wasn’t ever for fun. We were running for our lives, half of it. We were fighting the entire time, and on the wrong side, and…”

Emma arches an eyebrow. “Did you get to meet anyone you liked?”

Lucy pauses. “I got to meet Lincoln. He’s my favorite president.”

“See?”

“And then he was shot right in front of me.”

Emma opens her mouth. Closes it. “Ah. Anyone… else?”

Lucy thinks. The corner of her mouth twitches upwards into a smile as an image comes to her of dark hair and pursed red lips. “Judith Campbell.”

“Kennedy’s mistress?” Emma smirks, her eyes sparking with interest. “What part did she play in saving America?”

Lucy laughs, startled, and explains about the brilliant, complicated woman who wouldn’t let anyone make her ashamed of herself and her choices, and the nuclear testing site, and how Lucy looked her in the eyes and thought _this is what Aphrodite looked like._

Emma listens, rapt, and then asks her about the other missions. Lucy tries to focus on the good, to tell her about the positive points, few and far between though they might have been, and the heroes and heroines she got to meet, and as she speaks she realizes… there was good. She got to stare great people in the eyes, to breathe with them, if only for a moment, she got to be a part of the history she’s so loved, and nobody else in the world can really get to say that.

“Is there anyone you didn’t get to meet that you would’ve liked to?” Emma asks, when they’re halfway through their food and Lucy’s just wrapped up the whole mess that was the Alamo. It wasn’t a fun mission. Having to recreate the Alamo letter, all of that pressure, fleeing to leave behind men who would die, pulling Wyatt back from the brink as his PTSD hit him.

She’ll never forget the lost, panicked look in Wyatt’s eyes, the heat of his skin as she held his face in her hands, how he clung to her. Afterwards, they’d held hands in the Lifeboat, and it was the first moment she’d thought _oh, maybe, possibly._

Lucy shakes away the ghosts of _possibly_. She has far too many _possiblys_ in her life, possibilities that have come and gone, vanishing like morning mist.

“Josephine Baker,” she says. “She was my crush when I was in high school. I had to do a paper on her and I just fell in love with her. That’s how I realized I was bi.”

Emma nods. “She was amazing. My historical crush was always Queen Elizabeth.”

“A classic.” Lucy taps her fork against her bowl. “Hedy Lamar,” she says. “That’s another one—you know she’s the reason that we have Bluetooth technology? If she’d held onto her patent she’d be a billionaire now. Bigger than anyone. But the Navy basically stole it from her.”

“I wish Tesla had gotten a patent,” Emma adds. “The idea of his name being used by Elon Musk of all assholes…”

“He’s rolling over in his grave,” Lucy agrees.

“He was from… well, what is now Croatia,” Emma says. “Flynn could probably tell you about him, he seems like a secret history nerd.” She pauses. “So he… he was right. About these Rittenhouse people.”

“It seems almost too ridiculous to be true, I know.”

“No, no it doesn’t.” Emma puts down her silverware and smiles. It’s a much gentler smile than Lucy would’ve expected from her. Then her face slides into something harder—not at Lucy, but at something or perhaps someone else. “Men—white men specifically—trying to take over the world? Trying to tighten the grasp on it that they already have? Isn’t that what they’ve been doing throughout time? The Aztecs and Incas had entire empires, technological and cultural marvels, and the Spanish wiped them out. If they had a hold of a time machine… makes sense to me.”

“What would you do?” Lucy asks. “If you had been me.”

Emma shakes her head. “I wouldn’t be a historian, I’d be a pilot, for the time machine. That’s what Rufus and Anthony and I… all of us… were training for. Or hoping for, I guess. And at first when you all showed up with these finished machines I thought—oh man, I’ll actually get to do it in my lifetime. But now that there’s this whole… possible side effect on our bodies, I don’t know if it’s… it might be even less possible than before.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t apologize. You didn’t cause this. Good to know about pitfalls before we go insane, right?”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“Don’t blame yourself for things that aren’t your fault.” Emma sounds firm, and it’s similar to how Flynn will bolster her up and believe in her, cheer for her. “Flynn and the others wouldn’t be so loyal to you if you were causing messes right and left. You were in a shitty situation and doing the best you could.”

“I was the bad guy, though. I was working for Rittenhouse. Flynn always talks about all this shit that he’s done but… but what about what we’ve done? What I did? He was working on the right side the whole time and I… I wasn’t. I was enabling the… the bad guys, for lack of a… better term.”

“Have you spoken with him about this?” Emma looks concerned, her eyes getting a bit dark.

Lucy snorts. “No. God forbid. That would mean… I mean it wouldn’t necessarily mean touching on other things with anyone else, I guess, but with us there’s this… there’s this huge elephant in the room.” She explains about the journal, and her future—or is it now past? or alternate?—self, and her relationship with Flynn.

“So now everything about who we are and how we relate to each other is tied into that. It’s a part of that. And I don’t know—I have no idea how he wants to handle it. I think he just wants it all to go away because… because I’m not the woman in the journal. And he’s accepted it and I’ve made it clear but he’s just—I mean how obvious can a woman get? You know? I…” She makes an inarticulate noise of frustration. “He’s struggling with a lot of… with grief, you know, I mean, how do you grieve people who are still alive?”

“How do you grieve people who never existed, people that only you remember?” Emma counters. “I’d think you two would be uniquely suited to understand one another.”

Lucy groans. “God, _thank_ you.”

Emma’s cheeks go a bit pink.

“I don’t know if he just needs more time or not so I’m… trying to give it to him. We’re all going through things at our own pace. Finding people who were dead are now alive, or the other way around, feeling… feeling our way, really. I’m an undergrad again and I’m in my thirties. I’m trying to be patient with myself, patient with him, patient with everyone. Not to… to expect perfection from myself. Not to push. But… it’s a blow to your self-esteem when someone who’s become so important to you and you don’t even know how that happened—when they won’t—when they don’t let themselves be close with you. When there’s this wall.”

“Look, if he can’t see the brilliant, incredible woman right in front of him, then that’s his problem,” Emma says, drinking the last of her water. “Anyone would be lucky to get with you, I might not know you too well but I know that much.”

Lucy can feel her face heating up. She’s been complimented by men, often, and even when they don’t compliment her, she can read the thoughts in their eyes like hyenas baring their teeth. It’s rare that a man can compliment her and have the words settle in her chest instead of crawling down her spine like a spider of ice. But it’s different with women. With women—there is a vulnerability, a sensitivity, a sincerity that makes her stomach do a little flip and something warm in her chest that feels like a hearth fire.

“Thank you,” she manages. She’s been trying to learn to accept compliments instead of deflecting them.

“Although,” Emma adds, her voice carefully nonchalant, “if he doesn’t want you, I’d be more than happy to lend a helping hand.”

Lucy looks up from her food, startled, and her gaze meets Emma’s. She has a moment of realization, almost as if she’s seeing the other woman for the first time, as she understands anew that Emma has lovely sharp bone structure, and piercing honey colored eyes, and a smattering of freckles, and a perpetual smirk lurking in the corners of her mouth.

They end up in the restaurant bathroom a minute later.

Emma’s got her pinned up against the wall, her hand down Lucy’s pants as Lucy shoves her hips down and down and down and down, whining high in the back of her throat as Emma’s thumb rubs right up like _that_ and she wraps an arm around the back of Emma’s shoulders, trying to hold on. Emma’s other hand is under Lucy’s knee, keeping her spread and upright, and she’s managed to undo Lucy’s shirt buttons with her teeth—her _teeth_ —and is kissing Lucy’s breasts like she’s being paid.

“Oh God,” Lucy croaks, because Emma just shoved her fingers in even further and it’s been so long since anyone touched her but herself, and she has a severe weakness for women telling her what to do.

It’s hard and fast and rather like the hookups she used to have in bars when she’d go out to sing, back when she was an undergrad and still thought she’d join a band and abandon this whole history thing. Emma’s nipping at her skin and riding her thigh, her fingers curling and her thumb relentless against her clit, and Lucy can only hang on and plead _please please please_ in soft little whimpers.

“God you’re such a perfect little slut,” Emma whispers—then pauses. Her fingers still inside of her, and Lucy groans in frustration, her head falling back against the cheap bathroom tiles. “Sorry, sorry—is that all right?”

“You can call me whatever the hell you want,” Lucy says.

“But do you _like_ it.”

…all right, yes, she does like it. She likes it very much. “I—yes. When you—only during sex, obviously, but. Yes.”

Emma strokes her again, teasingly, feather-light, and a whine escapes her. “Mmm. Well, in that case, do you know what sluts do?”

“Beg?”

“They come when they’re told.”

Oh God, she is so turned on she can barely think and her legs are now officially jelly. She bites her lip, trying to keep her breathing from getting too harsh and noticeable. She’s not loud, exactly, but this is a public restaurant, it’s not going to take a lot for them to get caught.

Emma lets out a sly sort of giggle and her body shakes, seizing up, and Lucy can feel her thigh getting wet. She shudders. She did that, she got Emma off, and it gives her this rush of triumph that goes straight between her legs. “Go on then, be a good slut, come for me.”

It takes her another thirty seconds, the slick sounds of Emma’s hand sliding in and out of her, rubbing harshly against her clit, the only noise in the air until a high-pitched whine escapes and the rubber band inside of Lucy snaps, her vision fuzzing out.

Oh. _God_.

They kiss, quick dirty little pecks, Emma slipping her tongue in and out just enough to tease, and Lucy wants to rip their clothes off and start round two—but not here. They make themselves presentable, and Emma makes her promise to call. “For lunch,” she says. “And I do mean lunch. Jiya can join us next time.”

“What about other things?” Lucy asks.

“What sort of other things?”

Lord, she’s going to make Lucy be explicit, detailed, Lucy can already tell. It’s been so long since she could ask, since she could reveal her desires and feel like they would be accepted, reciprocated, and not made to feel shame or like she was pushing for too much.

They’re in the restroom, still, but the sounds of the restaurant are right outside the door, and any moment now she’s going to have to step out there and act like everything’s normal and she didn’t just get fucked rough and dirty in the handicap stall.

“I… I, um, things like…” Well, she’s been feeling for far too long like she’s floating and needs something to ground her…

Emma cups her chin, raises Lucy’s eyes. “It’s okay,” she says. Her voice is calm, firm, but not harsh. “You’re a singularity, Lucy, and not because of the time travel bullshit. If you’d let me, I’d like to give you what you need.”

Lucy swallows. “I need to be tied up. I—men, I like to be in charge but I can’t have that so—with women I want them to take charge and I want, I’m… floating away, I feel like I’m not solid, I’m… in this world, I’m incorporeal so. I want to feel real.”

Emma drops her hand from Lucy’s chin. “You know I want to kick Flynn’s ass, right?”

Lucy laughs so hard she snorts, startled. “I… would kind of like to see that.”

The corner of Emma’s mouth curves upwards. “I’d be happy to tie you up. Help you with that. You just let me know if it’s something you really want to do.”

Lucy nods. There’s so much trust that goes into something like that, and she appreciates it—more than she can say, really—that Emma’s stepping back and giving Lucy time.

“I’ll call you. For lunch.”

Emma opens the door, holds it for her so that Lucy can step through. “For lunch.”

 

* * *

 

Wyatt’s been trying to avoid Flynn ever since the whole ogling-him-naked thing. He didn’t mean to, but God, Flynn is… look it’s one thing to know that a guy’s fit and another to realize that the guy could probably lift you with one goddamn arm and that his chest is a fucking concrete wall. Flynn’s not walking around with an eight-pack, but Wyatt’s been in Delta, thanks, he knows what real strength is and it isn’t Hollywood’s superheroes. That’s all show. Real strength is solid muscle mass, and Flynn has that in fuckin’ spades. No wonder Wyatt was getting his ass kicked to kingdom come every mission.

He wants to ask how much Flynn can bench press and then decides that would be about as helpful to his wellbeing as drinking a gallon of bleach.

So he avoids Flynn, and avoids thinking about Flynn, and it’s all going very well, thanks, until Flynn pops his head into the security office one day and says, “Logan, lunch is on me” and then walks out expecting Wyatt to automatically follow him.

Wyatt hates Flynn with all the passion and depth of an active volcano.

But he also follows him out so… Flynn might be justified in his assumption. Just this once.

“I’m not your fucking dog,” Wyatt growls, hurrying after Flynn.

“Stay,” Flynn says idly, walking into his office and grabbing his phone.

It’s not until he walks back out with a smirk on his face that Wyatt realizes what he did. “Good boy.”

Wyatt’s pretty sure you could fry an egg on his face. “I hate you.”

“Uh huh.” Flynn resumes walking and Wyatt falls in with his stride. “Heard anything about the test results?”

Wyatt has not been thinking about that, because that would mean thinking about how they did the testing, which would mean thinking about seeing Flynn naked and realizing that if Flynn’s dick looked like that when it _wasn’t_ erect…

Dead kittens dead kittens dead kittens dead kittens…

He is not, as his father would say, a fucking fairy. He is not doing this. He likes cars, he likes country music, and beer, and pool, and, and action films, and breasts, and all of it. Okay? He is not… he doesn’t…

Flynn stares at him, and Wyatt realizes that Flynn is waiting for an answer. “Oh, uh, no, haven’t heard anything. But I mean they’re testing for something where we don’t even, they don’t even, know exactly what to look for, right?”

“Fair enough.” Flynn leads him outside and they get into the car, driving down the street to a local burger joint.

Now that they’re outside, Wyatt can see that Flynn looks a little… worn. Like he’s got something heavy on his shoulders, weighing him down. “You okay?”

“Hmm? Oh. Fine.” Flynn gives the menu a cursory glance.

“Yeah, that’s totally your _everything’s fine_ face.”

Flynn glances up at him and Wyatt’s stomach fucking _melts_. If Flynn growled at him to bend over his knees, Wyatt wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest, that’s the kind of look he’s getting right now.

Would he? If he was asked? If he was asked by _Flynn_?

He hates his brain.

And his dick.

Which is just confused. His dick is simply confused. It’s been years since he fucked anyone, tough times and all that, grieving a dead wife, etc. That’s all.

Flynn looks down at the menu, closes it, shoves it aside. “I looked up my family.”

“I thought you…”

“Not Lorena and Iris. My… my parents and my brother.”

Gabriel. Maria’s first son, the one who died from an allergic reaction to a bee sting, the one that Flynn saved so that his mother would smile.

“How… how’s he doing?”

“Oh, great,” Flynn says, in that sardonic tone that Wyatt loves and hates in equal measure. “He lived a great first eight years of his life. He’s buried in Texas.”

“What?” Wyatt blurts out, a little two loudly, and a few people glance over at them before resuming their conversation.

Flynn’s voice is tight and angry—not at Wyatt, but at himself. Or the universe. Probably both. “If Rittenhouse doesn’t exist, my family doesn’t die, I don’t learn about time travel, there is no time machine in the first place, I can’t go back in time and save Gabriel. He still dies. My mother still loses her child, six years after losing her high school sweetheart. She still goes to Yugoslavia and gets blacklisted, told she can’t ever come home because they think she sold NASA plans to the commies, she still loses a husband and a son and she’s not even forty yet.”

Wyatt stares at him. He had no idea, none at all, but. Why would he? He never cared about Flynn as a person. Just as a target. A problem to be eliminated. A one-dimensional villain to be snuffed out for the good of the grand ol’ U.S. of A.

He feels sick.

The waiter comes up and they order, but Wyatt’s not sure he’ll be able to take a single bite. His stomach and throat are tight, his feet like lead, and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, or anything, actually.

“It was a suicide mission,” he says. “You—when you went to NASA. You—without Gabriel dying you might not have been born.”

Flynn nods, once, curtly.

“You loved her that much?”

“My mother was everything. Growing up I… my father adored her. He could make her laugh when nothing else could. She didn’t laugh a lot. He worshipped the ground she walked on. And I never understood how he didn’t mind that there was that—that shadow that never left her eyes. Garcia—that was her first husband, I was named after him—I think she got over him. Or. Well you never really get over them, exactly, but you move on. She moved on. But Gabriel… not him. He was always this ghost lurking in her eyes. And then when I was fifteen I… we lost my father.”

Flynn looks away, through the restaurant, like he’s scoping out the place for enemies. “I was angry, I didn’t know how to handle it, so I signed up for the war. Three years too young. Matej and Stiv and I all went in together. My mother and I—she—she’d just lost her second husband and now she was losing me and it was… a hell of a fight.”

“But you came back.”

Flynn looks back at him and gives him the bitterest smile that Wyatt has ever seen. “I came back, yes. After my guts had spilled out from shrapnel and I’d held my boyfriend’s hand as he died next to me.”

Wyatt can’t breathe. Flynn doesn’t say the name, but he knows who it is. _Matej_. Stiv’s younger brother.

Fuck. Fuck. There’s no oxygen in this place. He can’t breathe. He might vomit. He can’t _breathe_.

“I came back and I wasn’t the son who’d left.” Flynn shrugged. “That’s what she was afraid of. She still lost me in a way. I saw things nobody should have to see, never mind a child. And I was still a child. Not by the war’s end but when I signed up.”

Wyatt doesn’t want to distract from the main topic, he doesn’t, but he also can’t— “So you and Matej were, you’re…”

Flynn blinks. Visibly adjusts his train of thought. “I’ve loved a man. I’ve loved a woman. I don’t really put labels on it.”

“If you label it… it’s real.”

Flynn snorts. “No. Some people find labels helpful. Some don’t. I’m just me. I’d have to tack on about five different labels with asterisks to explain myself, so I don’t. I fall for who I fall for. Simple as that.”

Wyatt has to kind of recalibrate his brain a little to digest that. “So is Maria…” he says, to stall.

“She died, in my timeline. A couple of years before… when Iris was three,” Flynn amends, carefully avoiding the subject of his family’s death. “Cancer. But she got to meet Iris. It meant a lot to her. And I convinced the government to let her come back to the states. Called in a lot of favors.” There is a longstanding anger in Flynn’s voice. “She spent decades unable to visit her friends, or see Garcia and Gabriel’s graves, she couldn’t go home. She was stuck in this country where she didn’t know the language or customs and had to relearn everything. She was one of the smartest women I knew and everyone thought she was an idiot because she was speaking her second language. She made me learn multiple languages as a kid so that I’d never have to go through what she did. She lived through her adopted country’s wars, watched it tear itself apart, she deserved to come home.”

“She sounds amazing,” Wyatt says, and he means that. “My mom… she was a meth addict. Split when I was three. Never saw her again. I used to hope sometimes as a kid that she’d come home, clean, take me away from my dad, but… I don’t know if she just didn’t care or if she OD’d or what. But both of your parents sound amazing.”

Flynn ducks his head down, like he’s embarrassed. It’s… it’s cute.

Wyatt shoots that thought in the head. He doesn’t think Flynn is cute. He doesn’t think any man is cute. Cute is for little kids, and puppies, and weddings.

Not men.

Flynn clears his throat. “Anyway. I’m sorry your parents weren’t… what a child deserves.”

Wyatt shrugs. “I try to… to think of what I got out of it. I learned to love cars. My dad would—he was a mean drunk and he’d take me out in his old pickup, drive it around until he fucking broke, then drink a six pack and make me fix it. Scared the shit out of me. But I learned about cars and I came to love ‘em.”

“Doesn’t excuse what he did.”

“Maybe not but—if I don’t find something good out of all that I’m going to lose my fucking mind.”

Their food arrives and Wyatt finds that hey he suddenly can eat after all, because if he’s eating, he’s not having to explain his personal shit.

Flynn doesn’t eat, he just looks at Wyatt for a few minutes, until Wyatt calms down and stops stuffing food into his mouth like he’s a starving Victorian orphan. “Wyatt.”

He looks up.

Flynn’s eyes are green.

He’s not sure how he never noticed that before.

“You don’t have to find the good. You can say it was straight up shit. You survived. You’re here. That’s all the good that’s needed.”

 _I’m scared that I’m like him,_ Wyatt wants to blurt out, but that’s the sort of thing he’s supposed to say to his therapist, not to Flynn, so he swallows it down.

“Thanks,” he says instead, and even after they both look away, he can’t erase the image of Flynn’s eyes from his mind.

The image follows him the rest of the day, until he gets home, and he swears he can still feel the weight of Flynn’s gaze on him until he’s feeling hot and heavy and he has to do something about it, has to flop onto the bed and shove his hand down his pants.

He tries to make himself think about someone else, about supermodels, about actresses, about that one porn video from five or so years ago that he liked, about, hell, even Jess—but instead the memory that keeps coming to him are the times that he and Flynn brawled. Like when they were in Vegas—Flynn kicked his ass that time, Wyatt can’t deny it, but at one point they were grappling and Flynn’s thigh ground right up against—

No, nope, definitely not—not thinking about that—not thinking about—Flynn pinning him against the wall—

Or when they were in D.C. and Flynn was staring down at him with this satisfied smirk, and when Wyatt was tied to the chair and his legs were all spread and fuck—fuck, or fighting with Flynn, in _tandem_ , when they were working together at Rittenhouse’s place and punched that guy at the same time and the thrum of satisfaction that shot through his veins—

What if—what if—

It all swirls and shifts in his head, not a distinct scene but flashes of possible images, of getting pinned, of Flynn’s hand accidentally brushing against Wyatt’s cock and realizing Wyatt was hard, brushing more purposefully next time—grappling turning into something else, Flynn’s thigh right between his legs—and fuck he feels like such shit and he thinks he might throw up but also, also it feels so damn good and he wants it so fucking badly, nausea and desire warring in him as he strokes himself hard and rough the way he imagines Flynn would and he pictures Flynn grinding up against him and growling in his ear and he comes so fucking hard his legs are shaking.

Jess comes over when he texts her. They’ve sold the San Diego place and her work takes her all over the world so she’s staying in San Francisco for now, kind of hovering, worried about him even though they both know he’s not her problem anymore.

He’s a mess from the shower, from scrubbing at his skin like he stained it somehow, his hair still wet enough to drip water onto the sofa as he sits there and pointedly denies himself a beer.

Jess doesn’t sit down. She just stands in the doorway. “Wyatt?”

“I think… I think I’m… I’m think I’m bi, or something,” he manages, and somehow he ends up with his head on Jess’s shoulder as he cries.

 

* * *

 

In the timeline that he knows, his mother died of cancer in 2012. His father died long before that.

In this timeline, Maria died when Flynn was fifteen.

And his father is still alive.

Asher Flynn lives in Karlovac, a city in the central area of Croatia about thirty-five miles southwest of Zagreb. He’s retired, and every other summer his son brings his wife and child to come and visit him. In the five years Flynn’s been gone, Lorena and Iris still visit.

Flynn hasn’t said anything. Hasn’t reached out. He hasn’t wanted to put Asher in the middle of that, force him to lie to his granddaughter. It’s different with Stiv.

But he lost his father at fifteen. His father who would waltz his mother around the kitchen, her head on his chest, as he looked down at her like she was the sun and moon and stars all at once. His father who taught him both how to throw a punch and how to sew a button, how to change a tire and how to sing traditional Croatian lullabies. His father who once caught Flynn crying and trying to hide it and told him to never hide his tears from him and hugged him and bandaged his knees and elbows when he got into scrapes.

The father he lost when he was only fifteen, to a stroke.

He will never forget his mother’s face. If only Gabriel had been there, he had thought. Gabriel would’ve been twenty-nine, fourteen years older, able to be the steady rock that Flynn could not.

Asher loved his wife with such intensity and gentleness that Flynn never wanted to settle for anything less. He wanted to find someone to be devoted to like that, because being devoted to Maria had made Asher happy, and Flynn wanted that for himself.

When he was a teenager he would’ve given anything for another day with his father, and now he has that chance again, and yet… how could he possibly reach out?

Now, though. Now he is coming home after hearing Wyatt talk about his own father, and his own shitty childhood, and Flynn can’t stand that. He can’t stand what Wyatt went through, he can’t stand that any parent would put their child through that, and he aches so fiercely for his mother and his father that he can’t stand it.

Lucy’s not home when he gets there, she’s got a night class on Mondays, which means she’ll be sleeping in tomorrow morning.

Flynn steels himself and tracks down Asher’s email, reaching out to him. Saying that he’s alive, but it can’t be known, and can they please talk tomorrow.

Asher was a diplomat back during the Cold War, which was how he met Maria. Well, if you consulted the official records. Flynn never got confirmation, exactly, but from the things his parents said, his father was much more than a diplomat. There was a reason that Maria’s colleagues and the U.S. government thought she’d been turned red.

He understands, in other words, and replies that they can talk tomorrow. They set up a time.

Flynn doesn’t tell Lucy immediately. Not that he won’t, or doesn’t want to, but his stomach is already in knots and he can’t eat and if he tells her then he’s going to end up doing something horribly embarrassing like crying on her shoulder and scaring the shit out of her. He wants to wait until it’s said and done, and then talk to her. He wants to know what he’s actually feeling first.

He stays in his bedroom, the door closed so that Lucy won’t be woken up too early and waits for the Skype call to connect.

Asher’s face fills the screen, and Flynn chokes.

He never got to see his father grow old. Never knew what he would look like.

“Garcia,” Asher says, and his face is lined and wrinkled but his eyes and his voice are sharp as ever.

“ _Tata_.” He takes a deep breath. Forces himself to let it out. Feels like he should’ve brought a paper bag in case he hyperventilates. “I’m sorry I—I’m only just now reaching out.”

“Where have you been?”

“I’m… not sure you’d believe me if I told you.”

Asher gives him a look, the same kind of look that he would level at Flynn when he knew his son had stolen the last of the cookies out of the jar or had been riding his bike up and down the high street like he’d always warned Flynn not to.

Flynn explains, as best he can, all that happened.

“This isn’t too ludicrous for you?” he asks repeatedly. “This isn’t too crazy? You really believe me?”

Asher seems amused by his son’s concerns. “I was a spy in the Cold War, Garcia. I went to science conventions constantly. I listened to your mother ranting about physics. I’ve heard enough crazy theories to last me a lifetime. I think I can handle one more. And besides, you were always honest to a fault. You could never lie to save your life. Anyone else? Perhaps I might doubt them. But you? The boy who would crumple and admit his wrongdoing the second you looked at him? No.”

Flynn wants to tell him that he’s gotten much better at lying, because he has. He’s done plenty of espionage himself, trying to be Asher, trying to live up to the father who towered over his early life (not that he’ll ever burden Asher with that knowledge, not now and possibly not ever), and he has learned that the truth, when applied judiciously, can be much more devastating than a falsehood. But overall, yes, he has become quite good at lying. At least when it’s to people he doesn’t care about.

But that will derail things, that will get them into dangerous territory, so instead he accepts his father’s faith. His father seems to still think that Flynn is a good man, still seems to see that little boy he raised—what parent doesn’t—and Flynn knows he should beg Asher to reconsider, to see all the things that Flynn has done, to listen, to acknowledge his sins—but he can’t.

He wants to be that little boy for his father. He never got that adult relationship with Asher and he’s so weak and greedy but he wants it. Craves it.

“You were saying?” Asher prompts him, and Flynn continues with his story.

When he gets to Maria, he—he can’t.

He can’t.

He’s crying before he realizes that’s what he’s doing. “I tried to make her happy,” he admits. He feels like a child all over again. “She was miserable after you died and I only made it worse, and I remember growing up… God, you know what she was like. She was always sad. And I did it. I saved him. I saved him for her but now it’s all undone and I did that. I undid that. I stole him from her. I wasn’t thinking. And I—I shot a child to do it, I—”

“Garcia. Please. It’s all right.”

It’s not all right. He doesn’t know that it’ll ever be all right again.

“Garcia, look at me.” Asher’s expression is firm, but kind. Asher never yelled when Flynn was growing up. He never had to. “You made your mother happy. You—you carry this grief, her grief, as if it was your own, and it’s not. You didn’t kill your brother. You didn’t take him from her. That is not your burden to bear. It’s hers. I… I haven’t lost a child. I was lucky, I am lucky, to have you. But if I had lost you and I had another—it doesn’t matter how I would’ve lost you, I would never put my grief on your sibling. Her life might have been bittersweet. She was burdened with more than she deserved. But you were the sweetness, Garcia. You always were.”

“In… in my timeline, you died. You died of a stroke, when I was fifteen. I signed up for the army.”

“And for me, it was your mother dying. You signed up then.” Asher sighs. “You can’t always find something to fight, you know.”

“I can try.” The argument feels age-old, like they’ve had it a dozen times, and he finds he can inhale a little better now. This is still his father. They are still family. “Mom… didn’t take it well when I signed up. We didn’t really reconcile until Matej died.”

He’s careful with his tone. He doesn’t know how his father feels about that. There were times, as a teen, where he suspected that Asher had guessed, but they never spoke of it.

Asher nods. “You lost him for me, as well. It’s… well. I know what it is to lose a partner. Although I flatter myself that sixteen years of marriage means a bit more than a year of secretly dating.”

“We were best friends before that.”

“True.” Asher gives him a small, melancholy smile. “Matej reminded her of your namesake, I’m guessing.”

“Yes.” They bonded over that similar loss, a young love snatched away.

Asher looks him up and down for a moment. “You look lost,” he says. “You look tired. Are you sure you can’t go home?”

“It’s not my home anymore, _Tata_.”

“Maybe so. But you’re not making yourself a new home, are you?”

“I… I have… I’m here, with Lucy, and…”

“But you’re not making it a home. You have to do that, Garcia, no man is an island. And we all need a port.”

“Am I a boat or an island in this metaphor?”

“Cheeky as ever, I see.” Asher sighs, worries his bottom lip with his tongue, a habit that Flynn’s well aware he inherited. “Your mother only ever wanted you to be happy. You made her happy. I promise that. You carry burdens so easily, you martyr yourself so easily, and you shouldn’t have to. It would break her heart to know you’ve carried this the whole time.”

Flynn wants to believe that. But he also can’t silence the part of him that whispers, dry as an autumn wind, that he deserves to be a martyr, that it’s not martyrdom if it’s proper punishment. That he has undone all the good he sought to do, and that righteous murder still leaves bloodstains.

“I won’t tell Lorena and Iris,” Asher promises. “But when you make a new home, Garcia, I hope you will show it to me.”

Flynn promises, because what else can he do?

But he doesn’t know how to make a home anymore. Not when he feels he hasn’t earned one.


	8. Chapter 8

Flynn isn’t doing so well.

If Lucy asks, he says he’s doing fine, but she knows him by now, knows him well enough to know that he’s not, that he’s lying to her. Perhaps even lying to himself.

She can’t recall a time that she’s ever seen Flynn truly happy, a time when he’s actually smiling, but she at least knows when he’s stable and when he’s teetering off the deep end.

Lucy watches as Flynn idly turns the pages on a biography on Montezuma. It’s from one of her classes. Flynn insists he doesn’t want to get a degree in history, but he always enjoyed it and it seems that time travel has sparked a more intense interest in it. It warms her chest to see him reading her books, when he discusses history with her over dinner. It’s the best part of the day.

“Ga—Flynn?” She’s still not sure if she should call him by his first name or not. Would it be taking too much liberty? Would he feel uncomfortable? Would he appreciate it?

“Hmm?” Flynn puts a bookmark to hold his place. Flynn is big on bookmarks. Every time he sees that Lucy’s dog eared a page she swears she sees him lose a year off his life.

“You’re not fine.”

Flynn looks up at her. “What?”

“You keep saying that you’re fine, but I know you’re lying to me.” She folds her arms. “You never lie to me. You’ve always been honest. I don’t appreciate you lying now.”

“I’m not lying. I’m just…” Flynn sets the book down. “I spoke to my father.”

Lucy freezes. “Your—you’ve never mentioned him.”

“That’s because he died.” Flynn sits up properly. “When I was… when I was fifteen. It’s why I signed up for the war.”

She sits down next to him. “And now in this timeline he’s alive?”

“And my mother died instead.” Flynn’s smile is small and sardonic. “Seems I can’t grow up with both parents.”

Her hand wraps around his before she can stop herself or even think about what she’s doing. Flynn freezes, and for a second Lucy thinks he’s turned to stone.

She takes her hand back, snatches it away before she can do more damage. “I—I’m sorry. Was—is your father—can you get some more time with him, at least?”

“He has a whole life with me that I don’t remember,” Flynn remarks. “But… ah, yes. He… seemed accepting of the truth. Promised he wouldn’t tell Lorena and Iris about me. That he’d keep my secret. He was a spy during the Cold War although he would never admit it to me when I was a kid, so. He’s used to playing it all close to his chest.”

“Are you glad he’s still around?” _Was he a good father to you?_

“Yes.” Flynn is staring down at his hand like it’s not attached to him. Lucy wants to bang her head against the wall, to scream, and also to drown herself in the shower for about an hour or so. Was her touching him really that abhorrent? “I tried to be him, tried to fill the hole of him with… with fighting and living up to his exploits. I think I went about it the wrong way. My mother thought so, at least, but, hopefully some good came into the world through it.”

“I looked you up. Before. You saved a family in Iran. Helped civilians. Went out of your way a lot to help people—went outside of the mission boundaries. You’re a good person, Flynn, you did put good into the world.”

“Let’s not get too carried away,” Flynn says.

Lucy briefly considers slapping him. Maybe that’ll knock the self-loathing out of him and insert some common sense in its place.

“He’s worried about me,” Flynn adds. “Thinks I need a home. That I haven’t made one for myself.”

“Does he think you should go back to… to your family?”

Of course that’s what this is about. He must still have feelings for Lorena, and who can blame him? He walked away out of some misguided sense of self-sacrifice, not because he genuinely wants to be away from his family.

Flynn stands up and walks into the kitchen, opening the fridge. Stares into it. Closes it and turns back around. “He thinks I should find a way to be happy, whether that’s going back to Lorena and Iris or making a new family.”

“Do you—do you want to go back? To—to them?”

Flynn stares at her for a moment, like she’s started speaking Japanese. “Why would I do that?”

“…because it’s your daughter. Because it’s Lorena. You must—you must still be in love with her, right?” Lucy stands, wondering what the hell she’s missing. Why Flynn is still staring all bewildered.

“Why would I still be in love with her?”

Okay, now he’s just being stupid on purpose to rile her up or something. “She’s your wife.”

“She _was_ my wife.” Flynn braces his hands on the counter. “Lucy, I lived for nearly five years with her dead. That changes you. Just ask Wyatt, if you can get him to actually admit it. Whether I liked it or not I started to move on from my family. I changed and became someone else and it’s not just unfair to them to go back after all that I’ve done and who I’ve become, it’s unfair to myself. I’m not going back to 2014, I’m not going back to them when they died for me, I’m coming back and it’s 2019 and we’ve both lived five years thinking the other one was dead and we’ve both grieved each other and that means something. You can’t undo the five stages, you can’t just reverse it and ignore all the anger and denial and sorrow that you endured. As much as I want them to live, as much as I’m glad they’re alive, whether I like it or not and even though sometimes I might hate myself for it I got used to the idea that my little girl is dead, the idea that my wife is gone, and I had to find a way to live with that knowledge and with my own acceptance of it. Lorena has gone through the same thing. I can’t erase that. Going back to live with them, I would be living with ghosts, and it would be the same for them. Doesn’t make it any less goddamn painful, but it’s how the cookie crumbled this time.

“So no. No, I’m not still in love with Lorena. You can’t be in love with someone who’s dead, because someone who’s dead is static and unchanging and without nuance. They are frozen in your head, your heart, and they’re too much of you, too much of your own… your own projection of them. They’re not a person, they’re memories and there is no such thing as an unbiased memory. If you’re in love with someone and they’re dead, you’re really just in love with the idea of them—or you’re still in denial, and that’s just as dangerous.”

Lucy flings her hands into the air. “Then why are you moping around the house like a kicked dog? Flynn—”

“What are you trying to get at?”

“I want you to be happy, that’s what I’m trying to get at! And you’re clearly not happy with me, but now you’re saying you won’t be happy with Lorena and Iris, so what—what can I do, what do you need, how can I help because—because you’re staying here with me to make sure that I’m okay but you’re not okay and that’s not okay!”

“Are you—are you blaming yourself for my not being happy?”

“Should I?”

“No!” Flynn looks like he wants to actively tear down the walls of the apartment. “Lucy, whatever I’m—whatever I’m going through it’s about, about myself, about me, it’s not anyone else, it’s not you, it’s never—it’s never you.”

“Then at least talk to me about it.”

“It’s not your burden to bear, it’s mine.”

“Yours that I can sense, that I can see every day like you’re carrying the weight of time on your shoulders—”

Flynn’s eyebrows raise. “Given how we ended up in this situation in the first place I think that’s a rather fair weight for me to carry, wouldn’t you say?”

It takes her a moment to realize what he means. “Flynn. No. You can’t keep carrying that.”

“What, I can’t remember that I shot a child?”

“You believed in what you were doing—”

“Do you believe in it?”

That brings her to a halt.

“You want me to believe that I still deserve something. A home.” Flynn takes a few steps towards her, then stops, halts in his tracks. “Even after what I did. But do you believe that what I did was worth it? Can you forgive it—would you allow it? If you had been standing between me and that boy, would you have stepped aside? Would you have let me fire?”

Would she?

She doesn’t know. After all that she knows Rittenhouse does, after what he was having his men drag her off to, a dark, deep part of her like some Lovecraftian monster rises up and whispers _yes, yes, let him fire,_ but she also can’t let go of free will. She can’t let go of the idea that for those moments, history wasn’t set, it wasn’t the past, it was present. And it could change. And John Rittenhouse could still have been influenced, could still have grown up to go against what his father tried to teach him.

If Flynn was standing in front of her, enraged, at the end of his rope, screaming desperately at her for her to move… would she move? Or would she tell him no? Tell him not to do this, not to cross this line—that he was wrong, that he thought he couldn’t be a father again but he could, he _could_ , but not if he did this?

She isn’t sure. And she hesitates for too long, at least for Flynn, because he nods grimly as if he expected as much, as if her silence is condemnation, turning away from her.

Part of her wants to keep fighting, to yell at him that he can’t ask her that question, that he has to find a way to forgive himself because it’s that or die and she can’t watch him die inside, she can’t lose him after she’s lost her entire life, after she’s had to rebuild herself.

But she’s tired, so, so tired of reaching out and him pulling away, she can’t do it anymore.

“I’m going out.” She grabs her shoes.

Flynn turns back to look at her. “Where?”

“Does it matter?”

Emma answers on the second ring, sounding surprised. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Are you free? Like, right now? Are you free for the evening?”

“I think Sir David Attenborough and the whales will forgive me,” Emma replies.

“Can I come over? Can you—I need—I need to get out of my head.” She feels out of control and since she can’t take it back she needs someone to take it away completely and be in control for her and tell her it’s all right before she literally rips herself in half.

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “Sure. But… are you really in your right…”

“Yes. I just—I can’t do this anymore. I… I’m wound too tight.”

“Okay.” She can practically hear Emma thinking. “Okay.”

Emma gives her directions to her house, and when Lucy pulls up, she finds it’s a lovely ranch style home. Must’ve cost a fortune, but then, as one of the lead scientists at a billion-dollar company, Lucy’s sure that Emma gets paid well.

The woman in question is at the door when Lucy walks up. “I can feel the tension,” Emma comments, leading her inside. “You sure you don’t just need a massage?”

“Funny.” She doesn’t want to think, doesn’t want to do anything, she just wants to get out of her head and stop all of it, get off the ride.

She steps forward, grabbing Emma by the shirt and hauling her in as best she can—a bit of a challenge given their height difference—kissing her.

Emma laughs against Lucy’s mouth, indulging her for a moment before pulling back. Her hands fall to Lucy’s waist, thumbs worming their way underneath Lucy’s shirt, swiping back and forth across the skin. “Whoa, there, hold on, let’s talk ground rules.”

“What part of ‘tie me up and fuck me’ is difficult for you?” She doesn’t usually snap, she’s not usually bratty in bed, she’s not impatient, but right now—she just needs to stop spinning out of orbit.

Emma starts kissing her again, walking her backwards through the house. If she’s frustrated with Lucy’s tension, she doesn’t comment on it. “Safe word?”

“Strawberries.”

“Humiliation or praise?”

“Depends on the night.”

“And tonight?” Emma pushes her back and she falls onto the bed. She hadn’t even realized they’d gotten to the bedroom.

“Both?”

Emma nods, then reaches down, her hand fastening in Lucy’s hair. Her other hand is casually flicking open the buttons on her shirt, sliding down the zipper of her jeans.

“Just one last question,” Emma says. “Then we can begin. How rough do you want me to be?”

Lucy’s breath hitches in her throat. “Rough as you want.”

Emma raises an eyebrow. “All right, then.”

She guides Lucy’s head forward, pushing her jeans and underwear down. Her hold is tight, perfect, and Lucy revels in the pleasure-pain of it, the full control Emma has over her movements. Emma’s starting to get slick, she can see it, smell it, and it makes her dizzy.

“I think you know what to do,” Emma says, and now her voice is casual, dismissive, but her eyes are bright and focused and Lucy can see that nothing, literally nothing of what’s going on is slipping past Emma. She’s taking it all in.

For the first time in months—since she was taken from her home and put onto a time machine—Lucy lets someone else be in charge. She lets go, and just does as she’s told without question.

It’s fucking liberating.

She hasn’t let go like this, had a partner like this since Carine, her college girlfriend, and with Emma’s hand steadying her, she just gives it up and relaxes. She’d forgotten how intoxicating it can be, dangerously so, to release all responsibility and put it in someone else’s hands. This is where BDSM, where domination and submissiveness, can become too much of a headrush, can become addicting, where people can go too far down the rabbit hole and fall.

It’s Emma’s job to make sure Lucy doesn’t chase the rabbit, and Lucy—she might not know everything about her, but she trusts her to take care of her in this, at least.

She leans in, at first just kissing Emma’s thighs, her stomach, nuzzling, refamiliarizing herself with the idea of touching another woman like this. Her last few partners have all been men—she’s tried to be a good daughter, to find someone to settle down with—and getting to be with a woman at all is freeing in a way that she hadn’t expected, that she’d forgotten.

Emma is patient as Lucy finds her way, as she begins to explore, grow bold. She licks in, curls her tongue, wiggles it, relearns how this all works. When she finds the movements, the spots that make Emma tense and give off a small sigh, she chases them, hunts them down relentlessly. She wants to do this right. In a world where she can’t even figure out who she is anymore, this, at least, she can get right.

“Mmm, that’s it.” Emma’s petting through her hair, seizing handfuls and tugging occasionally. “Can’t have a greedy thing like you coming first. Sluts are so easily spoiled. Especially a pretty thing like you, I bet you’re used to everyone just giving you what you please. You have to earn things around here.”

She wants—but she’s not sure—she pulls back just enough, tilting her chin up. “Can I—what are the touching rules?”

Emma pauses, pursing her lips in thought. This view of her is gorgeous, her shirt open, miles of skin and her breasts on display, her gaze imposing and imperious, red hair spilling down her shoulders. “You can touch for now, until you’re tied down. Does that work?”

Lucy nods. Yes, that works, that definitely works.

Emma nudges her face forward again, and now that she knows she can, Lucy slides her hands up, uses her grip on Emma’s thighs to get a better angle. Out in the rest of the world she doesn’t know what to do to help the people she cares about be happy. She doesn’t know how to help Flynn. She can’t help Wyatt. She failed her sister, her mother, herself, she certainly can’t even begin to figure out how she’ll ever be happy again. But here, the rules are simple, and giving and taking pleasure is easy. Making Emma happy is easy, here.

She curls her tongue just the right way and gets her mouth around Emma’s clit, sucking, and that does it, that finally gets Emma to jerk her hips, to shudder, and so she keeps at it, keeps at it, her own body growing hot, her clothes feeling too small and restricting as she hears Emma’s breathing get harsher, until Emma’s making a mess of her face.

There’s a surge of triumph that Lucy hasn’t felt in ages, a feeling of accomplishment. Everything else is lost but this, this she’s got, this she has handled.

She keeps at it, because Emma didn’t tell her to stop, continuing to work her until Emma jerks her head back. _As rough as you want_ , she’d said, and she meant it, she wants it rough, wants to feel something—everyone is treating her like she’s made of china, fine spun glass, and she’s not, she wants someone to show her they know she can take it.

Emma releases her hair. “Very good. Up on the bed, strip.”

Lucy does as she’s told, watching as Emma finishes taking off her own clothes and opens up her closet, rooting around. There’s a small, frustrated huff of laughter before Emma finally emerges with a shoebox.

“Cliché, I know, don’t give me that look.” Emma opens the box and pulls out a rather nice set of ties. Silk, seems to be. Lucy approves. “Hands up over your head, there’s a good little slut.”

Lucy does as she’s told, and spreads her legs, too, without asking.

Emma looks extraordinarily amused. “Eager. Perhaps a bit too eager.”

She grabs Lucy’s hands and yanks them up, crosses her wrists over one another, straddling her as she ties her up. “Spreading your legs like that, like you think you’re just going to get an orgasm like that?” She snaps her fingers. “No, we’re going to see how long it takes you.”

Lucy swallows. “How long it takes me to what?” Her breath feels stuck in her chest.

“Deep breaths,” Emma orders, and Lucy inhales sharply, deeply, does that a few more times until Emma nods, satisfied.

It helps. The knot in her chest loosens and she feels like she can relax again, sink down into the bed.

“How long it takes you to beg,” Emma replies. “You can’t come until you beg.”

Then she wraps another tie around Lucy’s mouth and Lucy jolts with arousal and realization—she’s gagged, she can’t beg, she can’t fulfill the terms.

Which was undoubtedly Emma’s plan.

“If you need me to slow down, snap your fingers once. If you need me to stop completely, snap them twice. Just like a safe word. Nod if you understand.”

Lucy nods.

“Nod if that works for you.”

Lucy nods again.

“Good.” Emma pulls back, no comforting touch or gesture, and shoves Lucy’s legs farther apart. There’s something else, something on the bed, something small, but Lucy can’t get a good look at what it is—and then Emma’s bending down, her tongue lapping right at the core of her, and oh, fuck, this is going to be a long night.

The restraints are just tight enough that she feels well and truly caught, and she tugs instinctively and uselessly at them as Emma roughly tongue-fucks her, scraping her teeth every so often, making pleasure and pain meld and Lucy’s entire body jerk. It’s just enough pain that she can’t quite reach or even draw close to orgasm, but there’s enough pleasure to drive her wild, to make her thrust up and seek more, to whine and start to lose all sense of time and place.

Emma pulls up and away, and Lucy moans, struggling to get a proper word through the gag. Emma tuts and shakes her head. “I’m going to have to break you in a little, aren’t I? You’re so pathetic, so eager for it, just a needy slut.”

She’s grabbing the item, the one Lucy couldn’t see before, and slicking it up—holding it up so Lucy can see—and oh fuck it’s a vibrator. Jesus Christ.

“My sluts only come when they’re allowed, when they ask for it nicely, and not a minute before.” Emma’s grin is wicked as she works the vibrator in. Then she pauses. “Do you want to come?”

Lucy tries, she really tries, but all her words end up muffled and gargled from the gag. Emma sighs and gives an affected shrug. “Well, I guess not.”

She flicks on the vibrator and sits back, and Lucy just about screams with frustration.

It’s on the lowest setting, at least to start, a tease that never builds or gets higher, keeps her feeling like she’s on the edge of madness but not falling over. Emma’s eyes are dark and greedy, her gaze trailing over Lucy’s sweating, heaving form, and her hand slides down between her legs.

Lucy moans, unsure which is hotter at the moment, the sensation between her legs or watching Emma get off. Emma kicks the vibrator up a couple notches and her whole body goes tense, her toes curling. _Fuck._

“You’re going to take whatever I choose to give you,” Emma says, as Lucy swears through the gag and writhes and tries, tries with all her might, to will herself to orgasm but it’s not enough, it’s not, she needs it more, harder—

Up and down, up and down, Emma’s toying with her, increasing the levels and then decreasing them, bringing her up until she’s seeing fireworks and sobbing and so very close, and then dragging her back down away from the edge. Tears start to leak out the corners of her eyes at some point, she’s covered in sweat, and she’s going to have marks on her wrists from all the yanking. It feels so good, _hurts_ so good, and she’s starting to reach that point where she’s incapable of coherent thought, just floating on a haze of want and need and desire.

A sharp smack to her ass jolts her back to the present moment and she blinks the sweat out of her eyes.

“No fading out on me.” Emma’s voice is sharp as a blade. She spanks Lucy again and Lucy thinks she might actually have come just a little from that. She can feel the wet spot that’s growing underneath her, between her legs, her thighs a mess, and part of her is grateful to Emma for being good and not letting her slip too far but she also just wants to go back to that world where she doesn’t have to think or even exist, she can just feel.

Emma keeps that up for a little longer, touching herself watching Lucy, playing with the vibrator, touching Lucy wherever she wants, bending down at one point to lap and suck at her breasts, like Lucy’s a fascinating toy or a television show, purely for Emma’s entertainment. Lucy’s almost used to the pattern, almost used to the pleasure, to the haze, and then—then Emma jacks the vibrator up to its highest setting.

Lucy screams. She doesn’t mean to, doesn’t plan it, but the sound rips out of her, and probably the only reason the neighbors don’t come knocking is the gag (by now rather wet from her sweat and tears and spit) muffling the sound.

Emma turns off the vibrator and slides it out, coming with a low hum, her eyelids fluttering. “You sound so pretty when you scream like that,” she notes, and Lucy feels triumphant again, pleased that she did that, that watching her was beautiful enough, pleasurable enough, to get Emma off.

She’s so close though, so close and she needs it, she’s been riding the edge for God knows how long by now and she needs it more than she thinks she even needs her next breath.

“Poor slut,” Emma croons, and she crawls up, pressing her knee between Lucy’s legs, letting Lucy mindlessly grind against it. Lucy’s not even thinking about it, it just happens, she can’t help herself. And that’s the beauty of this, isn’t it? She doesn’t have to think. She can just be.

Emma leans over her, working the gag off her mouth. “Stop moving.”

A whine escapes but she shudders to a halt, stops grinding against her. “Look at you. So desperate. Why didn’t you beg to come? Hmm?”

“I—I couldn’t.” She doesn’t have the brainpower to figure out what she’s supposed to say or do. “I tried, I tried…”

“Shhh, good girl, I know you did. That was a cruel trick I played, wasn’t it?” Emma pets through her sweat-damp hair. “Let’s hear you beg now.”

“ _Please_.” Her voice sounds hoarse and reedy. “Please, please, please, Emma, can I please come, I need—so bad so so bad please please can I please please—”

Emma cocks her head, and then slides her fingers into Lucy, curling them, her thumb rubbing up relentlessly against Lucy’s sore clit, as her other hand finds Lucy’s throat and presses down with the webbing between her thumb and forefinger, right underneath Lucy’s jaw.

It feels like choking, like Emma has her very life in her hands, like Emma has it all covered, all controlled. She doesn’t have to even breathe if she doesn’t want to. Emma has her.

The sensation is too much and everything spikes, everything, a soundless scream ripping itself out of her, her body jerking so violently she feels the bed moving with her.

She orgasms, and everything blurs, and she finally thinks about nothing at all.

After a scene where she’s the sub, she just wants to sleep, so that’s exactly what she does after Emma unties her and she uses the bathroom. She has no idea for how long, but when she wakes up, Emma’s watching _Planet Earth_ and munching on cereal, Lucy’s head on her thigh.

“The princess awakens,” Emma teases. She hits pause and sets the cereal down. “C’mere.”

They go to the shower, where Emma makes sure she gets clean. Probably should’ve showered before she napped, and had some water as well, but she’s having it now and that’s what matters, right?

Emma monitors her carefully as Lucy drinks, and offers up the food in her fridge, but honestly, Lucy’s not feeling too hungry. She feels empty, and in a good way, and she’s not quite sure she’s ready to try eating something yet.

“How do you feel? Talk to me.”

Lucy shrugs. “I feel better. Good. I needed that.”

“Yeah, I could tell.”

Lucy looks at her over the rim of her glass as she takes another sip. “Can I come over again?”

Emma looks at her, like she’s reducing Lucy to a series of numbers, a mathematical equation, and then tallying her back up again. “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” Was she not good enough?

Emma reaches out, tucking a lock of hair behind Lucy’s ear. “Because I’m not really what you want. Or who you want. I’m always up for some fun but… I don’t think I like being the substitute for something or someone else. And I don’t think that it would be good for you, either. Trying to use me when you’re really just avoiding thinking about others.”

“I’m…”

“My feelings aren’t hurt, Lucy, honestly.” Emma gives her a smile and it’s a small one, but it feels genuine. “I’m not saying you used me… badly but… you don’t really want me. I enjoyed this. I did. But I won’t be a crutch for you. I won’t let you use sex any more than I’d let you use alcohol.”

A lump forms in her throat and she looks away, unable to keep staring into Emma’s relentless gaze. “I do care about you.”

“And I care about you, I want to keep being your friend. But let’s face it. If we kept this up, it’d go sour, because I’m not what you want, and you’re trying to escape instead of facing whatever’s going on.”

“Did you take a class in psychology while you were at CalTech?”

Emma laughs softly. “No. But I grew up with a shitty father. Drunk ass bastard. When I was ten my mom packed the car and we drove and drove and drove until we hit the coast. After that I—I didn’t let myself think about my life… before. There was before, with him, and then after. It was like I was two different people. I didn’t deal with any of that shit until college when I had a breakdown my freshman year. I got help, I got therapy, I dealt with it.

“So I know what it is to run away. And how easy that is. But I do care about you, Lucy, and so does Rufus and so do the others. We want you to be happy and you won’t be unless you face whatever this bullshit it, whether it’s your mom or you or Flynn or some combination. You have to face it.”

Lucy nods, because what else can she do?

Emma leans in, kissing her softly on the forehead. “I’m still your friend, Lucy. Just… without benefits.”

Lucy laughs wetly.

She gets her clothes, and accepts a hug, and gets back into her car. Grips the steering wheel. Manages to keep from crying until she gets home, and then just sits in the driveway, hiccupping with the force of it, and she’s not even sure what she’s crying over or why, but it feels like a thunderstorm breaking a heat wave, the first fall of water after three months of bad summer.

When she gets back up to the apartment she can hear Flynn on the phone with someone. She opens the door quietly and sees he’s pacing up and down from the living room to the kitchen, his head ducked down.

“No—no, I don’t know where she went—she’s perfectly capable of making her own decisions, Wyatt, she’s an adult, I just—it’s my fault, I was—I screwed up—”

Flynn and Wyatt have, apparently, gotten close enough that Flynn calls Wyatt when he’s in a crisis. Huh. She did not expect that.

The journal flits through her mind, the knowledge locked in there, and she shoves it away. As pleasing as the idea is…

Lucy opens the door all the way and steps in, shutting it behind her. Flynn freezes, then pivots.

He looks a wreck.

“She’s back,” he speaks into the phone. “I’ll—I’ll call you back, okay?”

He hangs up the phone as he crosses to her. “Lucy. Lucy, are you—”

“I don’t know what to do to get you to open up to me,” she says, which wasn’t what she was planning on saying at all but seems to be what she needs to talk about. “You want to bear this all alone and you shouldn’t, and you can’t, and I can’t watch you do that.”

Flynn looks at her like he’s got an entire annotated essay he wants to say to that, including a ten-page bibliography and an accompanying PowerPoint, but instead he swallows, and takes her gently by the elbows, and just says, “I’m sorry.”

“That’s the thing,” she says, and her voice gets all choked up again. “I want you to stop saying I’m sorry, I want—”

Somehow they’re hugging, and Flynn croaks, “I’ll try,” as she soaks his stupid turtleneck. How does he make turtlenecks look good, that’s going against the laws of the universe. “I’ll try,” he repeats.

“You better,” she says, and it’s not the end of the argument, the discussion, far from it, but at least it’s—it’s a plateau.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt’s not sure what’s going on with Lucy and Flynn, but from the looks of things it isn’t all that good.

He’s also ninety percent sure it has something to do with Emma, because Emma and Flynn are avoiding each other like two dogs that will rip each other’s throats out if they get near each other and so they’re carefully maintaining distance to avoid an all-out war.

At least Flynn’s talking to him about it, though. At least a little. And when Lucy runs off one night without explanation and Flynn panics, he apparently decides Wyatt’s the one to call.

Wyatt’s not sure how good of a job he does talking Flynn down, but at least it’s something, right? It has to be, doesn’t it?

He’s been going to therapy. Working mostly on his issues with his dad and the shit he saw on tour. He knows that isn’t the only shit he’s got to deal with but it’s the biggest pile of it and he still can’t… he still can’t…

Except for the first time he said it to Jess, he still can’t say the words out loud.

Jess has been surprisingly gentle about the whole thing. He hasn’t talked about it to anyone besides her, if ‘crying and blurting out nonsense’ can even count as talking. She hasn’t pushed about anything, just kept asking if he’s okay, and occasionally reminding him that he’s still himself. He’s still Wyatt.

Given that half the time he’s not even sure who Wyatt is, this is only half as comforting as she means it to be.

It’s probably a bad idea, but never let it be said that Wyatt Logan knew how to leave a bad idea alone, so he heads over to their apartment one night on an impulse. Flynn said something earlier about a quiet night in, so Wyatt knows they’ll be home. He just hopes he isn’t interrupting anything.

He’s pretty sure that Flynn and Lucy aren’t… anything. Even though he’s also pretty sure that Flynn is head over heels for Lucy. If he’d been realizing that back when they were still on opposite sides, he probably wouldn’t be taking it so well. But he’s seen Flynn laughing and relaxed, seen him angry and impulsive, seen him calculating, focused, seen him at the end of his rope and seen him soft and reassuring. He’s not just the black and white villain that Wyatt wanted him to be.

It’s easier to pretend you don’t find someone handsome when you can call them a bad guy.

Maybe if things had gone differently he and Flynn would still be enemies but, if nothing else, at least Flynn is his friend. And Lucy has always been his friend, his stupid crush on her aside, so. He wants to make sure they’re okay.

Lucy answers the door when he knocks. “Oh, Wyatt.” She seems relieved to see him, like he’s just taken a weight off her shoulders.

“Hey.” He has never seen Lucy and Flynn uncomfortable with each other, and he has no fucking clue what he’s supposed to do with it besides make an idiot of himself so that they have something else to distract them. “I know I just… showed up but um, I thought maybe… I could use someone to hang out with, my apartment’s feeling really big lately, and I thought you guys might… feel the same?”

Over Lucy’s shoulder he can see Flynn up on the couch reading _The Sorrows of Young Werther_.

Yes, Wyatt’s read it. It was the assigned book for his German language class in high school, the one fucking class he actually liked besides shop class. It seems oddly fitting that Flynn’s reading it. Flynn definitely fits the Sturm und Drang protagonist.

“Hey, Flynn,” he calls.

Flynn looks up, and the look on his face is decidedly fond, and Wyatt thinks his damn heart flips over in his chest. Fuck. “Hey, c’mon in.”

Lucy leads him inside and Wyatt kicks off his shoes. He hasn’t been here since Flynn was gone and it was the three of them, Rufus and Lucy and Wyatt, like old times, trying to keep Lucy out of the bottle and off the deep end.

“We already had dinner,” Lucy says apologetically. “But if you’re hungry…”

“No, no, I ate, I’m—I’m good, I just wanted to say hi, hang out, we haven’t done that lately.”

Lucy collapses onto the chair, which means Wyatt has to take the other side of the couch. It strikes him as odd that there’s distance between Lucy and Flynn, that it shouldn’t be this way. The few times he’s seen them interacting on missions, Lucy was always getting up in Flynn’s face, Flynn having to practically loom over her because otherwise he couldn’t look her in the eye, they were so close. This is—this isn’t right. Like mismatched socks.

“How’s Jess doing?” Flynn asks, and somehow that breaks the iceberg that’s keeping them locked apart from each other.

Wyatt talks about how she’s going to be leaving soon on assignment, and how she’s threatening to go on a backpacking trip through South America with no forwarding address if Wyatt doesn’t make a decision on whether he wants to keep their old couch or not. Lucy comments about how weird it was that her fiancé, Noah, was living in her house but all of the things in that house were apparently hers, which makes Flynn lose his goddamn mind because _you had a fiancé!?_

“I didn’t mean to!” Lucy protests. “I just came back and Amy was gone and he was there! In my house! We went to the Caribbean together!”

Wyatt just about falls off the couch laughing as Flynn looks like someone’s hit him with a wet fish. “What did you do?”

Lucy counts off on her fingers. “Had a crisis, fucked him, had a second crisis, asked him why he loved me, had a third crisis, fucked him again, kicked him out of the house.”

“Hey, she managed better than I would’ve,” Wyatt points out. “With Jess, I mean. And while we were doing missions still like…” He shakes his head.

“I don’t even want to imagine,” Flynn says dryly, and Wyatt grins at him before he can stop himself, his stomach swooping dangerously.

“I feel like I should’ve just cut him loose,” Lucy says, as Flynn gets up to go and refill their coffee mugs. No alcohol—Lucy’s not going to meetings or anything but she’s not really drinking anymore, either, Wyatt notices. “Like… he loved another version of me, he loved a Lucy that knew and appreciated him and I didn’t, I couldn’t.”

“Well, I mean… that’s why I held onto Jess for so long.” He sits up properly, leaning over the arm of the couch to be closer to her. Lucy leans in as well, so that their faces are only inches apart. “I’ve been talking about it in therapy, right? You see this awesome person and you see that they love you, or this version of you, and you’re so desperate to be loved that you’ll keep them around even though it’s not right for either of you because you’re not getting love from anywhere else, and it’s terrifying to move on and let go and so you’ll take this unhappy middle ground.”

“Look at you, Wyatt Logan,” Lucy teases, her voice dropping down a little, getting low and rough. “Getting all emotionally aware, when did that happen?”

He can feel his face heating up and he becomes keenly aware of how close their faces are, and he nearly recoils so fast he gives himself whiplash. He just barely tamps down on the urge and forces himself to sit upright, back against the couch cushions, because—because in that moment he wants to kiss her so badly, an impulsive messy teasing kind of kiss, and that’s a line that once crossed can never be undone.

Lucy, teasing commanding Lucy, with her sultry voice, is his ultimate weakness and he can’t, he can’t, not when he’s tangled up in knots over Flynn and not when—

Flynn walks back over and distributes the coffee, and Lucy gives him this look of such breathless longing that Wyatt nearly keens in anguish just on her behalf.

Not when Lucy loves Flynn. Not when Flynn loves Lucy. He can’t—he can’t mess that up. Can’t get in between. It’s not his place.

And neither of them wants him anyway.

Flynn hands him his coffee, and Wyatt squints at it. “Mine looks weird.”

“Drink it up,” Flynn replies idly, like Wyatt is an unruly child who doesn’t want to have his cold medicine.

Wyatt gives him a suspicious look but takes a sip.

Oh wow. Okay. That’s—that’s delicious. There’s this other flavor adding a layer, almost but not quite the same as the coffee…

“Hazelnut,” Flynn supplies.

“You just added a flavoring without telling me.”

“I got you hooked on espressos, Logan, when are you going to learn that you can trust me on these kinds of things?”

Wyatt shrugs. “I might need a few more examples.”

Lucy’s giving them both a strange look that she quickly wipes off her face as Wyatt looks at her, but she’s not quite fast enough. Wyatt doesn’t know if it’s jealousy, or realization, or resignation, or what.

“So,” she says instead, “who wants the gossip from my freshman history seminars?”

Wyatt wants the gossip, and wants a change of subject so desperately he might cry in relief, and listens to Lucy regaling them with all of the college drama that she’s too damn old for but loves watching unfold, until the clock hits one in the morning and he realizes, oh shit, he’s got work in the morning.

“Just stay the night,” Lucy says. “We can put you up.”

“You shouldn’t be driving,” Flynn says. “We can go in to work together.”

But he can’t. He can’t wake up in the morning and see them sleepy and vulnerable. He can’t know what Lucy’s bedhead looks like or how Flynn is before his morning coffee. It’s far too dangerous.

“I’m okay,” he says instead.

Both of them look doubtful. “You’ll text us when you’re home safe,” Lucy orders. It’s an order he doesn’t think to not obey.

“You should stop by again,” Flynn tells him at the door. His voice is low and quiet, and Wyatt wants that voice in his ear until the end of days.

“Okay,” he promises. Because he’s quickly learning that he’s a masochist.

It’s a painful feeling to know that he’s after two people and not just one, and that it’s unrequited, but he supposes he’s been in worse scrapes. His therapist is big on friendships. “You need more than just a romantic partner,” she’ll always tell him.

Being friends with Flynn, yeah, that is the last thing he expected to be a couple of months ago (has it already been months, can it really have been that quick), and definitely not as something he both wants and feels is a consolation prize as much as he tries to not let it feel that way.

_You should stop by again._

He shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t, not when he nearly kissed Lucy and he’s hung up on Flynn and his own Gordian knot of sexuality and they’ve clearly got a mess of their own to work out but at the same time he can’t say no to them, he just can’t, especially not to Lucy, that feels like going against his own nature. He can even pinpoint the moment it happened, the moment she took his face in her hands at the Alamo and told him she needed him, from that moment on he’s followed her wherever she’s led and he can’t go against that. Long before he had any kind of love for her, before he even thought to have love for her, he’s trusted where she’s led him and she’s been a cornerstone in a maelstrom and if she wants him to come back, he will, every night if he needs to.

It takes him hours to fall asleep. His bed feels too large and too hot and his skin itches.

_You should stop by again._

He will. He shouldn’t, because he’s terrified that if they ask him to stay again that he’ll say yes.

But he will.

 

* * *

 

Flynn doesn’t get drunk often. He’s been trying not to drink at all at least around Lucy, trying to be a good example. He knows from the journal, and from his weeks away from her, that it’s a trap she could easily crawl into, a roach motel, teeth that let you in but won’t let you back out, a tar pit, a sand trap. And he’s going to keep her from that as much as he can.

But sometimes, he can’t hold himself up. He feels like he’s drowning in his own hatred of himself. He can’t look himself in the mirror anymore and he can’t get himself out of bed sometimes and it’s like when he went to save Gabriel but so much worse because look how well that went, Mom, look how well he fucked that up. Saved Gabriel only to kill him all over again. And no, the first time wasn’t his fault, but he should’ve thought about that when he had that kid, that _kid_ , Iris’s age, that child, in his sights, he should’ve thought about it but he did what he had to do and he hated every second of it and he knew then that he’d hate himself but knowing and feeling are two different things and God he just wants to become someone else.

Being Garcia Flynn has been more curse than blessing the past three years, and he wishes—stupidly, like a fragile child—he wishes that Lucy, the one he first knew, would come walking through the door and sit beside him and he’d say _tell me again_ and she’d say _you’re a hero, you’re a hero and I love you, I crossed back through time for you, it’s okay, you’re still a good man._

Even if he doesn’t really believe that anymore.

Lucy, the real Lucy, comes back from her Monday night seminar to find him royally sloshed on the couch.

“Hey, you,” she says, setting her bag down. “You okay?”

Flynn should say he’s fine. He should say that if she could just get him some coffee or water and help him to the shower, it’s all good. He should say he just needs to go to bed.

But instead he says, “the last time I got this drunk was São Paulo.”

Lucy freezes.

They haven’t talked about São Paulo.

She knows about it from the journal. The other Lucy says that’s where she’s going, to give the journal to Flynn, knows that’s where he’ll be, but nothing more than that. Lucy doesn’t know the full story. She doesn’t know all that happened. All that Flynn let happen.

Lucy sits down on the coffee table, facing him, her hands in her lap. “You must’ve been in a lot of pain.”

Flynn snorts. That’s an understatement. “I was in a bar. Just a few weeks after… being on the run. I must’ve been on my… second or third drink when you walked in. You looked a few years older but no less…” Whoa, that’s dangerous territory. “You looked good.”

Lucy works his drink out of his hand and sets it aside. “You don’t talk about it.”

“It’s a little… difficult. To tell you. When we first met it felt—felt like I would’ve been inappropriate. And now it feels like… something in my chest…” He shakes his head to try and knock the words loose in English but they just won’t come. “Languages.”

“It’s okay.” Lucy’s voice is soft.

“You kissed me.”

He doesn’t dare look Lucy in the face.

“You kissed me, you took my face in your hands… first you said—you said that you knew I spoke English, you knew who I was, you said my name. Said you knew everything about me. Told me that we would be quite the team one day. Then you showed me the journal. Said it would explain everything, and that—that you knew who’d killed my family, and that it was Rittenhouse.”

He can still smell the alcohol and the stale air in the bar if he focuses. He can still feel the lock of Lucy’s air between his fingers. Can still taste her tears on his tongue.

“You said that we had started too late. That Rittenhouse was winning. That I had to act now and get the time machine before Rittenhouse did, steal the Mothership. And I asked—I asked why, why me.”

Her eyes had glittered in the dim lights from overhead. All the rest of the world had faded away.

“You said because I was the best man you’d ever known. Because I was the only person you trusted. I kind of… I don’t even remember, I made some… expression or snorted or… something I don’t… and then you made this noise…”

He can’t describe it. It was like a sob and a laugh and a wailing mourning cry all at once, the keening of the women paid to follow the pharaoh on his way to his tomb, the shriek of a wife who realizes her husband is never coming home, the hysterical laugh of someone realizing that they’ve laid out two place settings when it should be just one.

“You kissed me.”

It was a kiss of desperation. He tasted salt, and smelled strawberries and sweat and a hint of something metallic, like ozone. When she’d pulled back and he’d seen her face—he hadn’t even had to read the journal to know. He knew what love looked like, what devotion looked like.

He had wondered then, as he wonders now, what he could have possibly done to earn that from someone like Lucy.

Lucy, his Lucy, present Lucy, looks like she wants to fling herself on a sword. Like she would, if she could find one.

“Did we…”

“I think you wanted to. But Lorena had just died. I think you… it wouldn’t have been… I wasn’t your Garcia. And you weren’t my wife. But it was a—a rather intense kiss, I’ll say that.”

She had ended up almost in his lap at the bar, and had wrenched herself away almost the same moment that he had, as he’d realized he was expecting to see Lorena when he opened his eyes. She had stroked his face afterwards, the days-old stubble there, and had looked at him with such heartbreak that he’d wanted to hug her just from the solidarity of seeing another human being in pain the way that he was.

“No wonder,” Lucy says. She sounds exhausted. “No wonder you were so frustrated. You thought—the woman you knew thought you were a hero.”

Bitterness forms in the back of his throat. “Clearly she was mistaken.”

“Flynn. Garcia. You are not—do I need to drag you to therapy like Wyatt? When are you going to stop?” Lucy’s on her knees and he’s not sure when she got there. Just now? Ten minutes ago? How long has it been since she got home?

She takes his hand in hers. “Garcia.” She almost never calls him by his first name. It feels like a lance in his heart, a burning brand. “You did what you thought you had to. Not what you wanted to. That’s how it is in war. It’s the nature of it. And that’s what we were in. War. My hands aren’t clean either, neither are Wyatt’s. None of us got out of that unscathed.”

“I know it’s stupid but I wish you had been there.” Flynn voice is hoarse. “You saved me once and I wish you had been there and saved me again, I wish you had stopped me. I wish you’d—you’d gotten in between, I wish…”

“But then we’d still be fighting. Rittenhouse would still be out there.”

“I know, I know it’s stupid, and I—I probably wouldn’t have thanked you for it at the time but… I was angry with the situation, with myself, with your inability to trust me this whole time, especially after—” Flynn halts, flicks his tongue over his bottom lip, then continues. “But I don’t know how to live with myself, with what I’ve done.”

“After I said that I trusted you,” Lucy whispers. Her hands are a vice around his. “After I gave you and no one else the journal.”

He nods. It makes the whole room move like a ship in a storm.

Lucy stands, tugs on his hand. “You’re not sleeping on this couch. Your back will hate you in the morning.”

He follows her, as he always has. “I was trying to do what you told me. I didn’t always trust the journal, you know, but as things started coming true that you said—that’s when I started to really… really trust… miracles don’t just happen, they don’t just _happen_ , but you happened. And then you weren’t there.”

“I’m sorry.” Lucy leads him down the hall. Lightly pushes him so he falls onto the bed. “I’m sorry, Garcia, I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

She pulls back the covers and gestures for him to crawl underneath. “But if it’s any consolation, any at all, I promise, I don’t blame you. You did what you had to. It was war.”

Lucy is illuminated by the light from the hallway. It throws her into an odd combination of shadow even as her head glows. Angel and demon, and he’s not sure which he followed. Either way, he was bewitched.

“You… you said this quote. I tried to find it but couldn’t and that was because… well it was 2014 and you were from 2019. I actually—I actually don’t think it’s been written yet. I check, periodically, but we’re in 2017 now so… I guess there’s still time before the person writes it. But I couldn’t ever—forget what you said, even if I could never find the source of it.” Flynn rubs at his eyes, his vision and this mouth dry and burning.

“The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.”

Lucy cocks her head. “Instructions?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll linger, then.” There is a pause so long that he nearly slips completely into slumber. “Garcia?”

“Yes?”

“Is my forgiveness really worth so much? Because you have it. You didn’t, at first. I admit. But. You have it, you do. I just…” He can feel the air around his head disturbed, knows her hand is hovering over his hair, but she doesn’t touch him and after a moment her hand falls away. “I don’t want my forgiveness to be worth more than your own. Forgive yourself, Garcia, please. For your own sake. I can’t watch you kill yourself like this.”

“I’m not killing myself.” He just wants to stop being himself, to stop his existence, it’s not the same thing.

Lucy says nothing. Her hand squeezes his to the point where he thinks she might actually manage to break his fingers, but she says nothing. Nothing else at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote that Flynn recites is by Mikko Harvey from “For M,” Foundry (no. 9, September 2018). Given that this all takes place in the months post-1x10 it is still 2017, Harvey has another year before he publishes that work.


	9. Chapter 9

He really doesn’t mean to keep staying over.

But Lucy and Flynn asked him to come back, they _asked_ him, and he can’t say no to either of them. He couldn’t say no to Lucy from day one and he hasn’t been able to say no to Flynn since he realized that he only reason he was saying no to Flynn so angrily and violently in the first place, like a painful knee-jerk, is because he wants to say yes to Flynn so very badly.

Besides, Lucy called him a couple of days after his first visit and asked, her voice very quiet, if he could keep an eye on Flynn at work. “I’d ask Rufus but he’s in a different department,” she’d said.

“Why?” Wyatt had asked. “Is he gonna say something stupid to Emma and get punched? Because I think that’s where the two of them are headed.”

“He’s scaring me,” Lucy had replied. And Wyatt had heard in her voice that Flynn wasn’t making her scared for herself, that he wasn’t scary to her—but that he was scaring her for himself.

Wyatt’s definitely kept an eye on Flynn after that.

So he’s over at Lucy and Flynn’s again, and again, and again, and he doesn’t mean for it to be a habit, he doesn’t mean to really stay, but he’s realizing how much he hates his own apartment, how empty it feels, and before he knows it… before he knows it he’s automatically driving over to Lucy and Flynn’s after work, like he fuckin’ lives there or something.

Or something.

“We should give you a damn key,” Flynn tells him as he opens the door for Wyatt. He’s on the phone with someone. “No, not you, Wyatt, he just got in. No, Lucy’s out doing something with the other students. I had to practically shove her out the door to get her to socialize.”

“Doesn’t help she’s a decade older than most of them,” Wyatt points out as he kicks off his shoes.

“I’m sorry, was I talking to you?” Flynn asks with mock rudeness.

Wyatt’s used to Flynn’s sass by now and just flips him off as he walks into the kitchen. _Just grab whatever food you want, Wyatt, for fuck’s sake,_ Flynn said to him once when Wyatt had asked if he could have a drink of water.

 _We want you to treat this like it’s your house,_ Lucy had added, much gentler in her delivery.

Flynn covers the receiver with his hand. “Jiya wants to know if you want to join us at the movies this weekend.”

“What do you want to see?”

“It.”

“I know, man, what’s the title?”

Flynn stares at him for a moment. “Who’s on first?”

Wyatt can hear Jiya laughing over the phone line. “Okay seriously what’s the film.”

“It!” Flynn scrubs a hand over his eyes. It’s a habit that Wyatt firmly tells himself is not endearing. “We all float down here?”

“Oh Jesus Christ, no, thanks, I want to be able to sleep for the next month.”

“Wyatt says he’s a wuss so he’s not coming.”

“I will fucking murder you.” He grabs a beer, tosses one to Flynn, then scrounges around in the fridge and finds the leftover ravioli.

He tries very hard not to think about the fact that he knew there would be leftover ravioli in the fridge.

Flynn finishes talking with Jiya while Wyatt warms up the food, hanging up as Wyatt walks over with his bowl and plops down onto the couch. “She said we can watch something nice and not-scary for you.”

“I hate you.”

Flynn snorts. “Join the club,” he mutters.

It’s quiet enough, mumbled, his mouth moving in a way that suggests he clearly doesn’t want Wyatt to realize he said it. But Wyatt does hear it.

“You know, uh…” He picks at his ravioli. “Lucy’s… she’s worried about you, man.”

Flynn glances at him as he fiddles with his beer and his phone, one in each hand like they’re each a different brand of poison and he’s not sure which one he wants to use to commit suicide. “Yeah, I… I got pretty messed up a few weeks ago and she dragged me to a therapist.”

“Dragged you? With that height difference? I’d love to see that.”

Flynn gave a ghost of a chuckle. “This isn’t my first rodeo on the couch. Lorena made me go to therapy a few months after we started officially dating. I had… a lot of issues. I’d never dealt with Matej’s death, or any of the other shit. Never dealt with my dad’s death, or how it made me sign up for the war too young, there was stuff with my mom… with Gabriel’s death… I’d been falling apart for years, shutting myself off in different ways, and I hadn’t dealt with it in a way that was healthy.”

“This is different though,” Wyatt says. He can hear it in Flynn’s voice, see it in his eyes and the lines of his face.

Flynn nods. “I’d seen a lot of shit. Lost a lot of friends. But I didn’t hate myself.”

“Now you do.”

Flynn avoids Wyatt’s gaze.

“Why aren’t you talking to Lucy about this? I mean—she hasn’t told me much, just—that she was scared for you.”

“Lucy’s entire family and existence got erased. Every day she sees friends who don’t remember her and colleagues who treat her like a freshman. She’s starting over a decade older than most of her classmates. The last thing she needs is for me to be talking to her about how I hate myself for doing the thing that put her in this situation.”

Wyatt can’t argue with that. “You’re doing better than I am. If it helps.”

Flynn raises his eyebrow at him. Wyatt hates how attractive he finds that. “Oh?”

Wyatt shrugs. “Jess tried to tell me for years I was fucked up. I never listened.”

“What’s making you listen now?”

He picks at the label of his beer bottle, even though he hasn’t even touched the alcohol inside. He’s terrified to tell the truth, but the fact is… well the fact is he’s realizing he’s got a fuckton of toxic shit from his dad, and from society, and from the military, and he was never going to fully realize it with just women telling it to him. Jess and Lucy, fucking bless them, were never going to get through to him because he never would’ve listened.

It’s shitty, but it took Flynn yelling at him to knock him sideways enough to really hear what Jess was saying. What his therapist is now saying.

“You.”

Flynn’s just started to take a sip of his beer and chokes. “What?”

Wyatt can feel himself blushing and he’s never wanted to die of a spontaneous heart attack so badly in his life. “You… you said stuff, in D.C. and I can’t get it out of my fucking head. Lucy told me, after that, about the stuff you’d told her, and about all of it. And then with… with us, with Rittenhouse, you weren’t… you weren’t so bad and then when I saw… when you…”

He can’t say it. Flynn swallows, and Wyatt feels like shit for even alluding to it.

“I realized that I could get just as desperate and just as lost. That I could do something for Jess that I never thought I would ever do. That I could lose my way. I realized… way too late I realized you were a good person and that if you could do that—hell, who knew what I could do, what mistakes I could make. And then I saw Jess alive, and she was—she was her own person and I’d never let her be that person, I’d been selfish, and she’d died because of it. Rittenhouse killed her but I made it easy for them.

“I want to be a better person. So hey, for what it’s worth… you’re making me a better person. Kinda… shook me out of myself.”

Flynn glances at him. “We’re just a couple of self-loathing bastards aren’t we?”

Wyatt raises his bottle to him.

Flynn sighs and sets his bottle down, only half finished. “You shouldn’t hate yourself, Wyatt.”

Wyatt snorts. That’s rich. “I was an asshole to my wife for a decade, man.”

“I was a terrorist. I killed a child.”

“Pretty sure I killed more guys than you,” Wyatt points out. “If we’re gonna tally it up.”

“Let’s not,” Flynn replies.

His tone is sharp, acidic, dangerous. Wyatt knows that feeling, that tone. He’s felt it towards himself enough times. Now he’s the one setting down his beer. “Look, if I’m not allowed to hate myself, you can’t hate yourself. That’s how this works.”

Flynn eyes him, then looks away. Stands up. “Want some water?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Flynn doesn’t actually say anything more on the subject, asking instead about what movie Wyatt would like to see when they go out as a group, and Wyatt accepts the change for what it is.

It’s probably a good thing, he thinks, as he tries not to watch Flynn’s tall, stalking frame moving around the kitchen. A lot of tall guys become lanky, and maybe Flynn was, once, but he sure as hell ain’t anymore. He’s grown into himself and he moves like some kind of fucking… jungle cat or something.

Wyatt, on the other hand, has never quite grown into himself. He feels too compact half the time, too young, too… puppyish, or something, his hands and his feet and his ears, his teeth, little things that give him away when he looks in the mirror, things that make him think that he doesn’t quite fit inside of himself, like something was halted before it could finish blossoming.

…he’s pretty sure he didn’t drink any beer but he feels tipsy anyway.

But it’s a good thing, it’s a very good thing, that he doesn’t promise Flynn not to hate himself, because he’s staring at Flynn, and trying not to stare, and every second he does, he hates himself more and more and more.

 

* * *

 

Lunch with Emma and Jiya seems to be a regular thing now, and Lucy’s not entirely sure how it happened. She suspects that she’s been somewhat sneakily lured into this. But if it’s just out of pure pity, Emma and Jiya do a damn good job of pretending that it’s not, and she’s starting to feel less like someone that they spend time with because _oh poor Lucy Preston, everyone at Mason Industries heard about her, it’s so sad_ and more like someone they spend time with because, well, they actually enjoy her company.

She’s not always sure about Flynn. That he values her, she has no doubt, but that he’s sticking around just because of friendship and not out of some large measure of guilt… she only just got him to therapy and before that it was an uphill battle to get him to stop treating her like she was in a glass case and now it’s… it’s better, with Wyatt coming by pretty much every night. Flynn and Wyatt talk a lot. And she’s not sure why Flynn is talking to Wyatt and not her. Maybe it’s because Wyatt didn’t lose everyone. Wyatt got to stay normal. She’s the one who’s not.

“You’ve got something on your mind,” Jiya notes. “And I know it’s not trying to think about whether blue or green will look better for the living room.”

Jiya and Rufus are officially moving in together. Emma and Lucy have, personally, been hoping that this would happen for some time, seeing as Jiya’s taken to showing up to things in the same clothes or else Rufus’s shirts that she’s stolen, and Lucy can’t recall the last time that Jiya’s mentioned being over at her place. It’s always _oh yeah Rufus never has anything in his fridge so I had to go shopping_ or _thank God we finally got the dryer fixed so our lab coats can stop smelling weird._

As a part of Jiya and Rufus moving in together, they’ve decided to do some redecorating. Rufus apparently hasn’t redone the place since he first started working for Mason and it’s as good an excuse as any to do all the fun things he’s been putting off for ‘the right time’.

Lucy shakes herself out of her reverie. “I’m sorry. I was just… you know.”

“If this is about the results from the testing,” Emma reminds them both, “then I promise I’m going to let you know once they’re finish—”

“Finished taking our blood apart strand by strand until they can fiddle around with each piece of our DNA?” Jiya takes a too-large gulp of her soda, like she’s forgotten that it’s not alcoholic—or like she’s wishing it was. “Right, yeah. Someone give me some good gossip, there’s only so much distraction getting lost in IKEA can bring me.”

They did, in fact, just spend their lunch hour getting lost in IKEA, and they are currently eating IKEA food in the IKEA cafeteria and Lucy’s remembering just how goddamn delicious the food is. Also how fun it is to bounce on the beds.

Well, she could always distract with the bit of info she’s had stewing inside her chest for weeks now.

“So how awful would it be of me if I wanted to date two people at once?”

Emma spews her lemonade.

Jiya leans her elbows on the table. “Go on…”

Lucy shrugs. “It’s just… I feel painfully straight right now.”

“Because it’s two men?” Emma says dryly.

Lucy shrugs.

“Being with a man, or multiple men, doesn’t take away how bi you are.” Jiya fishes for another meatball with her fork. “I have sex with Rufus right now. Doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t want to for a long time and wasn’t sure that I ever would. I can still call myself demi if that’s what suits me.”

“Wyatt, though?” Emma asks. “I mean at least Flynn is aesthetically pleasing, I guess. He has a very symmetrical face.”

“You hate Flynn,” Jiya notes.

“Because he won’t get off his ass and date her!” Emma replies, using her fork to gesticulate at Lucy.

Jiya looks over at Lucy, eyes her, then nods. “Yeah. Fair.”

Lucy can feel heat creeping up her face. “Look, is it frustrating that I’ve got feelings? Yes, but I also… I also get that it’s not a good time. Flynn’s been really struggling after… after stuff he did to save us all from Rittenhouse. And Wyatt…”

“Why.” Emma has the blank face of lesbians everywhere who want to try and understand this whole ‘attracted to men’ thing but also would rather sit on a cactus. “Why him. Lucy.”

“Because he’s all soft with Flynn!” Lucy buries her face in her hands. “Look. Look when I was…” She gestures futilely. “When I was doing missions, for Rittenhouse although we didn’t know that, I could feel my whole sense of self slipping. And Wyatt was really supportive, because he knew what that was like. He’s—he’s really at his best when he’s being soft, and he—you should see him with Flynn, okay? They’re so soft together and I don’t think they even know it. I like—I like looking at them together. Watching them together, it’s like… And Wyatt looks at Flynn like…”

She pauses.

Emma and Jiya look at each other.

“…is Wyatt…” Jiya starts. She pauses.

The idea has honestly never entered Lucy’s head before. She’s been a bit busy trying not to let her own desires show to the men. Not when they’re both in therapy, both recovering, both struggling with loss. But… Wyatt does tend to look at Flynn like…

He looks at Flynn the way that Lucy wants to look at Flynn. The way she longs to let herself look, and linger, and take him in—no, breathe him in.

“Holy shit,” she blurts out.

“Does he _know_ he’s…” Emma shakes her head. “Why am I talking about this. I don’t care about men’s sexuality, especially not Wyatt Logan’s. What is wrong with me.”

“Many things are wrong with you,” Jiya notes.

“Look, whoever is—whatever the sexuality of everyone involved—I can’t help but feel a bit—isn’t it—you know? Greedy?”

“Greedy,” Emma and Jiya say together, eerily similar in tone.

Lucy shrugs. “I mean. I want two people.”

“Those two people would want you if they weren’t idiots,” Emma mumbles as she takes a sip of lemonade.

“Lucy. I mean.” Jiya shakes her head with a small, rueful smile. “What’s greedy about it if they want you back? You’re not just collecting people like they’re toys. You have more love to give? Good for you, I say. The capacity to love… to love selflessly and wholly and to give yourself to people… it’s rarer in this world than we give it credit for being, it’s what makes the world colorful. I don’t think you should feel bad. Especially you, of all damn people. Out of anyone out there who’s going to blame you for getting more people to love?”

“If you make me cry in the middle of an IKEA I will… do something,” Lucy manages, her throat tight, because Jiya and Emma are looking at her like someone they love, someone they care about, and she doesn’t know how to handle that.

She lost her entire family, her friends, her world, all in an instant. And she didn’t even know that she lost them until later, until she opened her eye sto a world where nobody knew her. Nobody cared. And now, she has friends again.

Even if Wyatt and Flynn don’t care about her that way, even if they never do, she isn’t alone. They’re her friends, and Jiya and Emma are her friends, and she is, somehow, still loved.

It’s… it’s a lot.

“So when are you going to declare your feelings?” Jiya says, taking pity on her. “You going to do a boombox or get a skywriter?”

“You are such an asshole.”

“She got with Rufus by making out with him while he had smoke in his lungs, I don’t think she gets to judge anyone for their love declaration choices,” Emma adds.

“He did not—the fire was on the other side of the lab, for crying out loud.”

“We smelled disgusting, Jiya.”

“Not too disgusting, you got that firefighter’s number.”

Emma smirks in fond remembrance. “Why yes I did. She could do pushups while I was sitting on her back. It was amazing.”

Lucy laughs, and notes the time, and remarks that they all should probably get going if they want to get out of this labyrinth of liminal space in time for Emma and Jiya to get back to work.

 

* * *

 

The thing is—out of all the parts of their conversation that could haunt her, it’s the one part she doesn’t expect that keeps floating back.

When she pictures the three of them in her head, and she pictures them more often than she’ll ever tell anyone, it’s been the men sharing her. She’s heard a few remarks from Flynn that lead her to suspect he’s not straight, but Flynn is a rather private book when it comes to his emotions in general, so she’s not surprised that she doesn’t know much. Can’t surmise much. But Wyatt she’s always…

All right so there was the whole thing with Fleming. Wyatt looked at the man with stars in his eyes until Fleming started flirting with Lucy. She’d thought Wyatt was annoyed that his hero was being an ass, but could it have been… jealousy? Jealousy that Fleming was flirting with her, and not with him?

The fantasies in her head change shape, now. It’s not just a matter of sharing. It’s a matter of watching, of being not just an exhibitionist but a voyeur, being not just an actor but a director. They fit well together—better than she thinks the men realize. She watches them when Wyatt comes over, careful not to let her glances stray for too long. Watches how Wyatt stares at Flynn, and how Flynn teases Wyatt, and how they’ll glance at the other one to catch the other’s reaction to a joke.

Jiya is right. Who can blame her, who is allowed to blame her, for wanting both? And it doesn’t make her any less bi. She’s spent so long growing her sexuality in the shadow of her mother, wondering what her mother will think, how she’ll react, feeling less like a person and more like a mirror image—a mirror image that is cracked or funhouse, not living up to the ideal of a perfectly reflected duplicate. If she wants two men, well then, good for her.

She can control herself, though. She can’t control the other two. What they want, or don’t want, that’s not up to her.

She really should ask Wyatt about it.

Instead she calls Jess and asks to meet for coffee.

Lucy has never met Jessica Logan before. She’s seen a couple of pictures, after Kate died and Wyatt showed Lucy some old photographs, and he was right—Kate and Jess did look rather alike. Same pert sort of face, same eye shape, same hair. Jess has an upturned sort of nose, though, and there’s something sassy about her that makes her stand out in the coffeeshop where Lucy meets her. It’s not anything Lucy can pin down, it’s just… there, and Lucy thinks she understands why people love to spill their secrets to Miss Logan, reporter extraordinaire, and why Wyatt fell in love with her.

“If it isn’t the famous Lucy Preston.” Jess smirks at her over the table, and oh, yes, Lucy’s a bit in love with her already. “Aren’t you a rainbow, no wonder Wyatt talks my ear off about you.”

“Thanks for agreeing to meet me.” Lucy tries to ignore the way she can feel her cheeks getting a little hot. Look, she hasn’t had sex except for those two times with Emma and Jess has very nice br—arms.

She has very nice arms.

Ahem.

“I was wondering when you’d give me a call,” Jess goes on. “Wyatt said you could use some friends and I’ve been dying to meet you, honestly, after all he’s told me about you.”

“Only good things, I hope?”

“Only the bad ones are worth sharing,” Jess quips back.

Yeah, Lucy’s definitely a little bit in love with her.

She’s completely distracted from her original mission as she just soaks up all of who Jess is, and she can’t stop feeling like she’s finally getting a look at Wyatt’s past in a way she never expected. Her whole time in knowing Wyatt she’s only known about Jess through his own loss of her, through the few stories he told about her, and now Jess is alive and in front of her and all Lucy can do is think, _oh. Oh._ Jess is vibrant, sarcastic, raw, rough edges and unexpected soft places, and Lucy can understand why losing her could send someone into a five-year-long tailspin.

Often repeated in dating advice columns is the wisdom that if you want to get to know someone, you get to know their friends. Jess might not believe this, and so Lucy won’t say it, but Lucy can see the best parts of Wyatt through Jess. The worst parts, too, because Jess doesn’t skimp on ratting Wyatt out—nor should she, Lucy thinks—but it’s clear that any good that’s in Wyatt, he got from his friendship with Jess, and Lucy’s grateful for it.

Not that they talk about Wyatt the entire time. Lucy’s genuinely curious about Jess’s work, and Jess is curious about Lucy. Jess has a fuckton of stories, has traveled everywhere, and Lucy’s envious and before she knows it she’s inviting Jess to join her with Emma and Jiya on their regular lunch dates.

“Let me get this straight, you’re inviting me to join two brilliant scientists on regular lunch dates, hmm, I’ll have to think about it.” Jess winks at her. “I am going on assignment for a couple weeks but it shouldn’t take me too long, I’m just off to cover the insanity that’s been going on in England recently.”

As they wrap up, and Lucy insists on getting the check, Jess grabs her wrist. “Lucy, honestly, one final thing.”

She looks up and thinks that Jess has very dark eyes that nonetheless, somehow, remind her of ginger snaps.

“I joke about the whole rainbow thing but… you really are a positive influence on Wyatt. You and Flynn. I… I flatter myself that I was, for a while, but it’s like… you go to the same thing over and over and it becomes routine. It’s not as effective. I was all he had and I wasn’t my own self anymore and he wasn’t getting what he needed from me anymore. He needed more people and you two are… I can hear it when he talks about you, he really cares about you guys. Honestly. I know he’s probably shit about showing it but—”

“You know Wyatt and I are just friends, right?” Lucy blurts out in a moment of pure convoluted panic.

Jess stares at her. “Um. Yes. Yes, I do know that. Why, was I making it sound like you… weren’t?”

“I’m sorry.” Lucy wants to dig a hole in the floor and crawl into it and pile dirt on top of her and never, ever leave. “It’s been… stressful, trying to figure out what my relationship with them is. Wyatt comes over every night, I swear he spends half his time at our place, but he and Flynn—ugh. I’m not a porcelain doll, you know?”

Jess nods. “Trust me, I know. Wyatt tends to put people up on pedestals when he loves them. We’re trying to break the habit.”

“He doesn’t put Flynn up on a pedestal.”

Jess pauses—it’s just for a second, but it’s enough. “Flynn is different to Wyatt.”

She can’t meet Jess’s eyes. She doesn’t think Jess can meet hers, either. It’s not their place to say it or discuss it. It’s not anyone’s place but Wyatt’s.

But it still hangs heavy between them.

“I hope he talks to someone about it,” she says at last.

“That’s the dream.” The corner of Jess’s mouth quirks upward. “You could try, if you wanted. Maybe he’ll listen to you. He… he opens up to you in a way he doesn’t with me. I think maybe he’s gotten used to tuning me out, even if he’d deny it.”

Lucy nods. “I don’t want to push him into anything that he’s not ready to talk about. He’s got so much he’s working through already.” Wyatt’s told her and Flynn about his therapy sessions—not much, usually, but a couple of times he’s practically kicked the door in so he can blurt out _guess what fucked-up suppressed memory surfaced today_.

“Sounds like Flynn’s working through stuff too.” Jess waves her hand in a _c’est la vie_ manner. “Men. Aren’t they lucky we wait for them to catch up to us?”

Lucy snorts and the air clears a little, gets less thick. “Lucky indeed.”

Jess clinks their coffee mugs together and they drift back to talking about other things, but she can’t help but hope in the back of her mind—she hopes, if nothing else, that if Wyatt _is_ , if he _does_ , that he trusts her enough to talk to her about it. Someday.

She can’t wait forever.

 

* * *

 

Flynn comes home to the sound of crashing books and immediately yanks the door open. “Lucy!?”

Images, horrible images flash through his mind. Rittenhouse is actually back, they’ve undone the timeline somehow, they’re taking Lucy—only instead of burglars, or white supremacists, or assassins, he finds a slight dent in the wall by the television, a haphazard pile of books on the floor underneath it, and Lucy with her hair down and wild. She’s baring her teeth like a wolf, her face is red, and her chest is heaving. Her eyes shine like dying stars.

Flynn closes the front door behind him and tries to get his breathing to even out. Even for just a second he thought she was in danger and he thinks it might have taken ten years off his life. “Lucy.”

She stares at him for a second like she doesn’t even know him, then shoves her hair back out of her face. “Sorry. I’m—I’m sorry.” Then she grimaces. “Fuck, no apologizing, I know.”

She tries to smile at him but it slides off her face like an oil slick on the surface of the water.

“What…” English fails him for a second and he gestures wordlessly at the books and the wall.

“I got a little frustrated.” Lucy sounds defiant, apologetic, weary, and bitterly amused all at the same time. It’s like a summary of her new life wrapped up in a single sentence and Flynn wishes, not for the first time, that if he was the one to force this on her that he was at least the one who could take it all away.

“School?”

“Among other things.”

Flynn flicks his tongue out over his bottom lip, a nervous habit. “You don’t have to do this.”

Lucy sits down on the couch, like her bones have suddenly become too heavy for her. “Do what?”

“School. A history degree. You could be anyone you want, Lucy, you don’t even have to stay here.” He strides over to her, crosses the room in just a few steps, kneeling at her feet. He’s always tried to even out their heights and if it often means that he’s on his knees like some kind of knight or supplicant then, well, it’s just fitting, isn’t it?

Lucy stares at him as if he’s speaking to her in Latin—she can understand him if she makes an effort but she’s not sure if she should bother. “But my friends are here.”

“But you can go. You can—we can—go anywhere you want, Lucy, if you want to just flee and go somewhere we can, you can be an entirely new person, you don’t owe any of us anything.”

Lucy gives him this fond, small smile. “You really would, wouldn’t you? Just, what, if I said let’s move to Indonesia or Rome or Peru you’d just up and go with me?”

He sits on the couch next to her. “Sure. Pick a place.”

Lucy gives an incredulous laugh, but she sounds genuinely delighted, and Flynn can’t help but smile a little in return. He really does mean it. He’d follow her anywhere. “You know I tried that once.”

“Tried what, running away?”

“Basically.” Lucy shrugs with just one shoulder. “I was in my undergrad and I didn’t want to go into history. I didn’t want to fall into the life that my mom laid out for me. I was feeling… depressed and trapped. I couldn’t—I couldn’t breathe, like that. I wanted… I wanted to be someone else, to be me, and I didn’t even know who that was.”

Flynn wants to ask what she decided, what her thoughts were, but he keeps quiet. Lets her tell this in her own time.

“I thought about dropping out. Joining a band. Not forever.” Lucy gives a small laugh, lighthearted, the kind of laugh you give when you’re thinking about how stupid you used to be as a kid. “But just for a while. Take a gap year, maybe. I thought… y’know I never got to be a stupid kid. I wanted to just be stupid.” Her voice gets small. “I wanted to have fun and be a kid. Be young.”

Flynn gets that. “I was in a hurry to grow up. Too much of a hurry.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I joined the war when I was fifteen, lied about my age. I wanted to be like my father. My mother was furious, of course. It was our first real argument but it was a long time coming.”

“My mother wasn’t too keen on my idea either—or she wouldn’t have been, if I’d ever told it to her.” Lucy takes a deep breath. “But first I—I was driving home from Stanford, along the coast, and it was raining. I was practicing my speech, what I’d say. Amy had been coaching me. She was so—so—so strong. So _herself_. I didn’t know how she did it.

“So I was, uh, I was practicing, and…” Flynn can see Lucy’s hands twisting, her fingers working around and around themselves. “It was raining and I don’t know what I did wrong. Maybe I did nothing wrong, I don’t know. But next thing I know my car’s spinning out, and I’m skidding and—I went right over into the water.”

Lucy shivers, like she can still feel it, and maybe it’s just a trick of the light but her face looks pale, her eyes dark, pupils blown, like she’s in the deep, dark water trying to take in whatever light she can. She looks cold, and Flynn—Flynn wants to reach out and put his arm around her so badly it’s like someone’s stabbing him, raking knives down his spine.

“This guy saved me. A bit older, his name was… Steve? Stan. Something. He dove right in and got me, he was really kind, waited for the ambulance with me. After that I thought—shit, what am I doing? Throwing my life away? It felt like… like… like the universe was punishing me or something.”

Flynn wants to comfort her. He isn’t sure if he can. But he remembers—remembers her asking him to not hold back from her.

He can’t be what he wants with her, but he can still be her friend.

Carefully, slowly, giving her time to pull away, Flynn reaches out. Wraps his arm around her shoulders.

Lucy nestles right in easy as breathing, like she’s been holding her air and this is the moment she can exhale, her head falling against his shoulder.

Flynn has to try a few times to get his heart to beat regularly again.

“Matej was my best friend growing up,” he tells her. “We signed up together, with Matej’s older brother. Stiv. We were too young, and I knew it, and my mom didn’t want me to—she said my dad would be furious with me. When—we were caught in a blast, and I—I got caught in the side but Matej…”

Lucy looks up at him, her eyes dark, so dark, he’s drowning. He doesn’t want to come up for air.

“I thought it was God punishing me—taking him away from me. For being stupid and reckless, for going against what my dad wanted, what my mom wanted, for being a stubborn asshole.”

“You know that’s not true,” Lucy whispers. Her breath is warm on his neck.

“And you know you can—you can go. If that’s what you want. It’s not—you aren’t being punished.”

It takes everything in him not to press a kiss to her hair. She smells like strawberries.

Seconds pass. Or is it years? Flynn doesn’t know. All that matters is Lucy. The weight of her, the way she fits into the side of him.

“I don’t want to run away again,” Lucy whispers. “I wanted to be in a band but I wasn’t doing it just because—I was also doing it because I didn’t know how to stand up to my mom while also living with her. I only knew how to stand up to her by running away and that—I don’t want to be that person. I want to be someone who makes decisions based on what she wants, not what she fears.”

There’s not much he can really say to that, is there? He realizes that he’s rubbing a circle into her shoulder with his thumb, but now that he’s started he’s worried it’ll be even more obvious if he stops, so he just keeps at it.

“I want to be who I want, without having to leave my home. This is still my home.”

“You can be, you will be.” He doesn’t dare look down at her. “You’re—you don’t even know how impressive you are.”

He thinks she might start up at that, but instead her head just gets heavier against his shoulder, her body sinking into him. “You don’t think that,” she whispers. “That’s the other me.”

“No. No, it’s you.” He won’t have her thinking anything else. “Look, all right, maybe—maybe when I first—when I first saw you, I was thinking of her. And you’re right, I claimed to know you and I didn’t, but I—I wanted to get to know you, and I feel honored that you’re letting me. Because you are the bravest person I’ve ever met. You lost everything, Lucy. And when I lost everything I ran until I couldn’t run anymore and then I nearly drank myself to death until you saved me. I’m here because of you, not because of any work on my part. But when you lost it all—you stuck it out. You stood your ground. And maybe it’s not saving someone from a burning house and maybe it’s not slaying a dragon but it is still incredibly brave. It’s why I believe in you. It’s why I always have.”

He feels something wet on his shirt but doesn’t comment on it. “How is it that you’re the easiest person to talk to?”

“Well, that’s easy. We’ve both lost people. We’re both geniuses.”

Lucy snorts.

“I’m here, Lucy. I’m not going anywhere. Not unless you want to go somewhere, too.”

Lucy nods, and doesn’t say anything more. Neither does he—he just waits until she goes completely deadweight against him and then carries her to bed, tucking her in.

He doesn’t say anything more, at least not to Lucy, but he does speak with Denise about possibly arranging for a short trip somewhere once winter break hits. Somewhere cold, somewhere unlike California. Somewhere Lucy can get away.

Just in case.


	10. Chapter 10

It’s one of those things that starts so slowly and keeps going, slow, slow, slow, until it shifts and he’s over a cliff and tumbling down at a hundred miles an hour with no parachute.

He can’t even say when it starts, that’s how much it sneaks up on him.

This is possibly how it starts:

Flynn is on one end of the couch, and Wyatt is trying to get up to throw away the empty beer bottle, because he and Flynn have this habit now where they sit up late and talk and Flynn’s voice is like slow molasses and Wyatt wants to fling himself off a roof with how much he wants to drown in that voice. He’s trying to get up, and he trips and falls back down, and Flynn catches him, and he’s pressed against Flynn’s side, and he just stays that way.

Or this is possibly how it starts:

He falls asleep against Flynn and they wake up together on the couch at five a.m. with cricks in their necks and he smells like Flynn for the rest of the day even after he takes a shower.

Or maybe this is how it starts:

Flynn makes a joke about what you do in the army away from your wife, and Wyatt says he never did that, and Flynn says he bets some of his buddies wanted to, and Wyatt recalls a few moments with Bam Bam that he maybe should examine in a new light now, and he says that nobody would dare because he’d fuck them up, and Flynn is somehow already next to him on the couch and they’re somehow already kind of entangled and so Flynn kisses him.

Wyatt doesn’t fuck him up.

Instead he ends up kissing Flynn slick and messy until they both yank themselves back, and Wyatt is burning, he’s never wanted anything or anyone so bad as this, or hated himself so much for anything, and he wants to rip his own tongue out and stick it down the damn toilet drain as punishment.

“We shouldn’t—” Flynn starts.

“Right, no, we won’t ever,” Wyatt agrees.

Two nights later Flynn’s got him pinned to the rug while Lucy’s out doing something or other and they’re still fully clothed but grinding hot and frantic and Wyatt comes in his pants with the stupidest damn noise like someone’s punched him in the kidney.

“We should talk about this,” Flynn says at one point, and Wyatt would normally be a lot more scared about that but Flynn says it while he’s literally just finished undoing Wyatt’s jeans with his teeth and so Wyatt really, really can’t think about panicking right now.

“Talk about what?” he asks. “Flynn, seriously? No. We’re not talking about this. Also why did you stop, oh my God…”

Flynn rolls his eyes and kisses him and mercifully drops the subject. Thank God for that, because Wyatt doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to say it out loud. So long as it’s unspoken, unsaid, it’s not real. It’s just fooling around with a guy friend, y’know, things bros sometimes do when they can’t get a girl, it’s a bonding thing. Everyone does it. Nothing really… you know… _gay_ about it.

He can’t talk about it.

Once you give it a name, it becomes real.

His therapist knows something is up. Jess knows something is up. Lucy might even know something’s up. Wyatt’s awful at hiding his emotions, awful at hiding, well, anything. But he doesn’t tell them and so they can’t name it for him.

He holds on tight as he fucking can whenever Flynn’s touching him, because the moment he stops, it’s over, and reality sets in, and he wants to curl up into a ball and scream. Flynn never asks why. He just grips Wyatt back.

They get close to talking about it, sometimes, when they’re discussing other things. It’s like water circling a drain but they never quite jump down the rabbit hole.

“I gotta wonder,” Wyatt says once, loose-limbed, floating a little in the aftermath, “why you put up with me, honestly. I mean. You know what a fuckup I am.”

He cried in therapy that day, about his dad, about how his old man would say that his mom was on drugs when she was pregnant with Wyatt so that was why he came out wrong.

He knows, logically, that isn’t why he’s bi. He knows that hasn’t made him predisposed to fucking up. He knows that the things his dad said— _stupid, retarded, spineless_ —are wrong.

But God help him, he still hears that old fucker’s voice in his head.

“Why do I put up with you?” Flynn chuckles like it’s hilarious. “Wyatt, I’m not exactly a saint, here. Not sure how many times I have to remind you of it before you remember it.”

“One more time should do it,” Wyatt shoots back, because that’s what they do now. Wyatt snarks, and Flynn puts him in his place—with a firm hand but a gentle one, and Wyatt’s pretty sure now that he could deck Flynn across the face and Flynn wouldn’t hit him back, Flynn would never touch him like that.

Wyatt thrashes and snorts and sasses, and Flynn takes control, and somehow, it feels like that’s how it should be.

“You’re a fuckup,” Flynn notes. “I’m a fuckup. It works.”

Wyatt knows he should be insulted by that, somehow, and he actually is a bit insulted on Flynn’s behalf because Flynn… Flynn isn’t nearly as big of a fuckup as he thinks he is.

He doesn’t know how to say it, so he crawls over and puts his head on Flynn’s shoulder so that Flynn can play with his hair. Flynn’s surprisingly tactile, he likes physical contact.

“Does this mean if we stop being fuckups and actually listen to our damn therapists that we have to stop this working?”

Flynn presses something into Wyatt’s hair. He tells himself it’s just Flynn’s nose, that it isn’t a kiss. “Nah, I think we’ll manage.”

God, he has no fucking clue what to do about this, and he hopes that nobody else ever finds out about it, and every day he walks into the apartment and prays that he’ll find the strength to stop it, but also—but also—

“We’ll manage, huh?”

But also if anything tries to rip Flynn from him he’ll tear it to fucking pieces.

 

* * *

 

Flynn knows that Wyatt’s not exactly treating their recently acquired bad habit with the healthiest of behavior. But then, if Flynn were to call Wyatt out on it, he’d have to call himself out on it too, and he can’t quite bring himself to do that just yet.

The thing is—sex, for him, has always been tied to love. Not that he hasn’t had moments where he’s fantasized. But he just doesn’t want to sleep with someone if he doesn’t love them. If they don’t love him, he supposes that’s fine. It’s not really about whether or not the other person loves him, it’s more about if he loves them.

He’s always known he’s… all right, so he hasn’t always known it. When he looks in the mirror, his current state of avoiding his own gaze aside, he hasn’t really understood what it is that would make all the girls growing up follow him around. Matej was jealous of it, back before they revealed their feelings and he knew that Flynn felt the same—afterwards, he would just laugh, because Flynn never knew how to deal with yet another classmate who was making doe eyes at him.

He doesn’t know what it is that people see in him. When he looks at himself all that he sees is his twice-broken nose, how tall he is, the way his shoulders stoop, and all the rest. He still sees that lanky boy who was too big in every way and couldn’t figure out how to get through a damn door without banging his head.

But people do see something, evidently, something they like, and want, and he’s just—never gotten that. Other people do that, though, so he can’t begrudge them if they don’t want more from him, the way he wants from them. Especially Wyatt, Wyatt who knows exactly what Flynn has done, the darkness Flynn’s coated himself with. Why would Wyatt want anything more from Flynn?

So it’s okay, or so he tells himself. And if it isn’t okay, well, it’s not like he deserves better.

He worries about it, though. Not for his own sake, but for Wyatt’s. Wyatt who won’t let Flynn touch him unless nobody else is in the room. Wyatt who startles like a scared horse when Flynn gets in his space unexpectedly. Wyatt who won’t ever look him in the eyes when they’re fucking.

Flynn’s tried—he whispers it over and over, _look at me, Wyatt, look at me,_ and Wyatt is so very good about doing what Flynn asks of him, except for this. This is the one thing that he won’t do, the one order that he won’t obey. He clings to Flynn instead, whimpering and kissing him so much harder, with that much more desperation.

So Flynn lets it lie.

He lets it lie, and if he wants more—if he wants to hold Wyatt’s hand, or kiss him casually when Wyatt walks in the door, or wrap his arms around him from behind and nuzzle against Wyatt’s neck because Wyatt’s sensitive there and it’ll make him laugh—well, he doesn’t get it, he won’t get it, and it’s just what he deserves, isn’t it?

“You really don’t seem the type,” Wyatt says at one point.

“The type to what?”

“Y’know.” Wyatt shrugs. They’re taking a shower together, because Flynn is not cleaning a goddamn stain out of the couch for the thirteenth time. “Fuck around.”

“I’m not fucking around, fucking around suggests that there are other people I am fucking.”

“Okay, but…” Wyatt looks adorable with his hair plastered to his face. “You know. This.”

Flynn shrugs. He plants his hands on either side of Wyatt’s head on the tile. “I don’t do… this. I don’t do casual.”

Wyatt’s hands shake a little as they land on Flynn’s shoulders. “Does this mean I can’t have you listed in my phone as Booty Call anymore?”

Flynn kisses him in between each word. “I’m… gonna… run out of patience with you one day.”

Wyatt grins. Flynn can’t see it, but he can feel it against his mouth. “Nah, I don’t think you will.”

Maybe early forties is too old to have a goddamn clandestine affair but if it’s what he’s being given, he’ll take it, because God knows, he’s never going to get anything else. Not Wyatt’s heart, and not anything of Lucy’s.

He wants, doesn’t mean he can have.

 

* * *

 

Lucy has to drive a bit to get to her classes, so she leaves before Flynn in the mornings.

Which is why she once again finds Wyatt sleeping on the couch.

This is far from the first time she’s found him this way, and the fact that she can’t immediately recall exactly how many times that is tells her that maybe, just maybe, this is getting a little ridiculous.

She sits down on the edge of the couch. In the morning light, asleep, Wyatt looks younger. He also looks far more tired than he should be, still dressed, on the damn couch instead of sleeping in a proper bed. Lucy can’t blame him for it, though. He’s been all alone in his apartment and if she were in his shoes, she’d be sleeping over with friends every chance she got, too.

Hmm.

The apartment isn’t terribly big, but it’s far from cramped. If Flynn was open to potentially sharing his bedroom…

Lucy leans forward to brush her hand through Wyatt’s hair and wake him up, and a shadow on his neck catches her eye.

She could be wrong—she’d have to move his collar to get a proper look and that’s an invasion of privacy that she can’t quite excuse—but that looks a lot like…

Twice, now, she’s been disturbed by a noise she couldn’t explain. Once when she was wearing headphones and listening to classical music to try and help her to concentrate better while working on an essay, and then another time when she was exhausted from midterms so she went to sleep before the men, only to wake up an hour or so later and wondering why. Both times—it wasn’t a noise, so much as the idea of a noise, but when she tried to concentrate, she couldn’t hear anything.

Could they have been…?

A strange mix of envy and jealousy twists inside of her and she has to swallow a few times, struggling to remember how breathing works. In all of this time—hoping, wanting, fantasizing—somehow it never occurred to her until this moment that Flynn and Wyatt might not want her as a part of the equation. That they might embark on something without her.

She blinks a few times, draws together the broken, scattered pieces of herself with frayed strings, and shakes Wyatt gently on the shoulder. “Wyatt, hey, sweetheart.”

Wyatt’s eyes blink open, and she can see him go from blurry, lazy drowsiness to full wakefulness. “Ah, shit, Luce, ‘m sorry, I…”

“Stop apologizing for falling asleep.” Lucy stands up, puts distance between them. Wyatt sits up, exposing more of his collar, and yes, it’s definitely a mark made from a mouth, small but dark and incriminating, and she burns like she’s been dropped in acid. “Wyatt, are you sure you’re happy living on your own?”

Wyatt slides a hand through his hair, wincing like he already knows there’s no saving it and he’s going to have to take a shower before work. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you keep staying over here.” She sits on the coffee table. It’s safer. “I mean, you’re here about five nights a week, and I think—well, if you’re lonely, we have plenty of room. Flynn let me have the master but I can switch with him, and you two can share.”

It’s fast but she still sees it—a flicker of icy blue, naked fear in Wyatt’s eyes.

“You know, boys share and all that,” she adds. It’s a poor joke, not that it’s in poor taste but in the sense that it’s really not funny at all, but if Wyatt doesn’t want his relationship with Flynn to be known yet, she can play that game. She hid a year-long relationship from her mother in college, she can understand something of secrets. Even though she hopes that Wyatt knows she would be more understanding, more compassionate, than whatever he fears.

Wyatt relaxes a little. “Uh, yeah, um. I’ll—I’ll think about it.”

“You should. We like having you over. It’s good for Flynn, to have you.” She wants to tell him she supports them, no matter what, but she doesn’t want to spook Wyatt, either. “I like having you over, it’s… it’s good, for me, to be around people. To be around friends. And we are friends.”

If nothing else—if she doesn’t get anything else—she does get his friendship. She wants that, and she’ll give that in return, if that’s all that he and Flynn want from her. She needs them, and this isn’t in the way that she wants, but friendship isn’t any less than romance, and it’ll just take… take… time. She just needs time.

That’s all.

She’ll be fine.

Wyatt gives her a small smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Of course we’re friends Luce. I’m always your friend. You were… you were real steady for me when nobody else was. You were there for me and you supported me—and I’m not sure I deserved it. If it’ll—if it helps—if it means that much to you, of course I’m gonna…”

“Will it mean something to you?” She doesn’t want this to be one-sided.

Wyatt looks away, quickly, guiltily, like a child in a candy shop who’s been eyeing the really big lollipop but doesn’t want to be caught looking at it, doesn’t want to admit that he wants this.

Lucy waits, feeling like there’s so much air crammed into the room that it’s crowding her, invisible but pressing against her from all sides.

“Yeah,” Wyatt says. He’s still not looking at her. “Yeah, it would… I like who I am, when I’m with you guys. Feels like the only time I’m someone that I want to be, someone new—still Wyatt but… the Wyatt that I should’ve been.”

She takes his hand before she realizes that’s what she’s doing, his hand just suddenly in hers, and she’s squeezing, so tight, and Wyatt’s squeezing right back.

“We like you when you’re with us,” she tells him.

Wyatt finally looks at her. He isn’t crying, but the expression on his face is the same as the one she saw when he was talking about proposing to Jess while they were with Bonnie and Clyde, and she knows that the reason he’s not crying is that there’s too much inside him for anything to get out.

She should have known, she thinks. Flynn and Jess are painfully, beautifully similar.

And just like with Bonnie and Clyde, she holds his hand, and knows that when he looks at her, he’s seeing someone else entirely.

But unlike last time, when all she felt was sympathy…

This hurts.

 

* * *

 

The one time they fuck, properly fuck, Lucy is sleeping over at Jiya and Rufus’s because Rufus is with Mason at some conference thing and so Jiya is surprising him by redecorating the apartment like they’ve been planning and she’s turning it into a girls’ night.

Flynn considers telling Wyatt to stay home, since Lucy won’t be there, but Flynn is truly learning what a glutton for self-punishment he is recently, with having Wyatt and hiding it and wanting Lucy and not having her at all, and he lets Wyatt come over anyway.

He’s really not sure which is worse, here. When Wyatt’s not there Flynn aches for him, but when Wyatt is there, it’s like having an open wound, because he feels guilty every time he touches him, every time he does something that makes himself happy.

At least it makes Wyatt happy though, and that excuses it, almost.

Wyatt walks in, sees the stack of homework Lucy left on the coffee table, and gives a low whistle. “She’s really in the thick of it, huh?”

Flynn’s taken to giving Lucy foot massages every night because her headaches are awful and she’s scared about getting too dependent on the pain medication. With the whole time travel thing hanging over their heads, they’re all paranoid as all get out about anything medical.

“That’s one way of putting it,” he tells Wyatt, who is prowling around the house lazily like he lives here.

He should live here. Flynn wants him to live here. He thinks that Lucy does, too. She watches Wyatt with this kind of soft, happy glow, like watching Wyatt be happy is giving her a boost of serotonin, and Wyatt—he latches onto her like a plant with sunlight. It’s sickeningly adorable and Flynn would probably hate it if he wasn’t so very in love with them both.

And Wyatt would fit here, too. He already fits, honestly, it’s just easier on everyone if Wyatt stays instead of having to go back and forth all the time. What’s he even using his apartment for at this point, to store his spare suit?

Flynn stays on the couch while Wyatt takes his time settling. Wyatt is always nervous, when they’re first alone together. Flynn keeps waiting for the moment when Wyatt will spook and just leave for good.

So far, Wyatt hasn’t. Flynn tries to hide his sigh of relief every time Wyatt settles onto the couch.

He always starts by sitting on the far end. Flynn thinks it’s ridiculous since Wyatt’s going to end up in his lap in about ten minutes but hey, if that’s one of those stupid rituals that Wyatt needs to calm himself down, then sure, they can go with that.

When Lucy’s here, she tends to sit in between them, or one of them will take the armchair and the other will share the couch with Lucy. They all chat, and he and Wyatt try to be upbeat and to focus on Lucy’s life and what she wants, needs, how she’s doing, her classes and all that. Flynn’s been floating the idea of a trip somewhere during Christmas break, mentioning various places around the world—Japan in winter is stunning, he hears, and there’s always Scandinavia with the northern lights. Prague is nothing short of magical, so is Vienna, and if Lucy doesn’t want to be in a plane long enough to cross an ocean there’s plenty of great places in Canada to admire.

They avoid talking about their own things—he and Wyatt, that is. What is there to talk about? They’re sleeping together but God forbid Wyatt let Flynn touch him if they’re not fucking? They’re both in therapy and it’s going but it’s still slow and Flynn has to remind himself about the whole tortoise and the hare story before he tears his own hair out with frustration over his own inability to be a functioning goddamn human being?

It’s better if they talk about Lucy. Support her. Bolster her up. She deserves it, after all, deserves their support more than anyone.

When Lucy’s not there, though—like tonight—things move a lot faster.

Wyatt finishes pacing and sits on the end of the couch. He’s fidgeting, which means there’s something he wants to say. He doesn’t fidget when he just wants to get to the good part.

Flynn nudges Wyatt’s thigh with his foot. “Spit it out.”

Wyatt startles like a rabbit that just caught wind of a fox. “Spit what out?”

Flynn just lowers his gaze at Wyatt. Wyatt will probably try to actually induce a heart attack in himself if Flynn were to ever bring it up, but he’s noticed that Wyatt likes doing what Flynn says. If he grows at Wyatt _just_ so, Wyatt’s knees will give out and his voice will crack around the edges.

It’s extremely satisfying.

Wyatt’s face goes all pink. “I don’t now, I just wanted to, y’know… I wanted you to maybe… we’ve been doing this for like a month now so I just wondered if we could try…”

The next words are out of him so damn quickly that Flynn can’t actually make them out, it’s just a string of mumbled gibberish.

“In English, Logan.”

Wyatt takes a deep breath and Flynn holds onto every inch of patience in him, struggling valiantly not to reach out and offer comfort.

Wyatt won’t appreciate that comfort. He’ll shove it away, run from it. Either through shame or self-denial or something else. So Flynn just waits.

“I want you to fuck me,” Wyatt says at last. It’s still rushed, but at least it’s understandable now.

Flynn blinks. “I thought that’s what we were doing this whole time, baby,” he says, unable to keep a bit of a smirk off his face.

Wyatt’s face gets even pinker and he throws a pillow at Flynn. Flynn bats it away. “I meant properly, asshole. Y’know. Grand slam or home run or whatever the hell you want to call it.”

For all his teasing, he does take this seriously. He’s aware that this whole thing is a big deal for Wyatt although again, Wyatt won’t say it, because God forbid Wyatt really talk about anything.

“If this is what you want, then Wyatt—we can.”

“Do you want that?”

Does he want that!? He wants it so badly that his pants are feeling tight and he can’t get any air into his lungs. “Trust me, Wyatt, I want whatever you’re going to give me. If you’re comfortable with this…”

“Comfortable?” Wyatt snorts. “I don’t know. But I… I want it. I want it and… and I trust you.”

Flynn moves across the couch, taking Wyatt’s chin in his hand. “Hey. If anything happens and you want to stop, or you change your mind, you tell me. Okay? Yes now doesn’t mean yes forever.”

Wyatt looks into his eyes. He has surprisingly blue eyes, and they look wider than usual, but Flynn doesn’t see any fear in them. He nods. “Okay.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Flynn leans in just a half an inch, waiting, drawing his gaze over Wyatt’s face. He doesn’t move past that—just waits.

Wyatt stares at him for a moment in confusion, and then distress, and just when Flynn’s about to help him out—he gets it. His face clears and he leans in, kissing Flynn like a tsunami.

Flynn catches him as Wyatt practically claws at him, climbing him, eager and desperate, like he wants to race for this. And that’s just not going to do at all, oh no. They’re going to do this properly, if Wyatt really wants to cross this off his bucket list.

He grabs Wyatt by the back of the thighs and pulls him under as Flynn presses him down at the same time, pinning Wyatt underneath him on the couch. This is easy, this is how they usually do it, and the familiarity seems to calm Wyatt down a bit, makes Wyatt calmer. Flynn keeps kissing him, over and over, and he can feel Wyatt begin to relax bit by bit until he’s still eager, still pushing back up, but now he’s getting into the rhythm of it, kissing Flynn back with ease, spreading his legs and letting Flynn fall in between.

“ _Dobar, dobar dečko_ ,” he murmurs. Wyatt makes a tiny noise against his mouth, both needy and pleased, and Flynn grins. Wyatt’s a sucker for praise.

“Keep being good for me, hmm?” he murmurs, and then he starts on his way down Wyatt’s neck. Wyatt’s wearing one of those lovely soft t-shirts, ones that are easy to pull aside to make way for Flynn’s mouth.

Wyatt turns his head into the pillow, trying to muffle the sounds he’s making, and it causes the tendons on his neck to stand out—Flynn bites down before he can even think about it and Wyatt makes this, this _noise_ , his entire body going pliant and shivering like a wolf surrendering, and Flynn, Flynn’s hips shove forward like his dick is trying to just bury itself in Wyatt and only the clothes are keeping it from happening. He wants Wyatt pliant and shivering like this while he fucks him, while he absolutely _wrecks_ him.

He yanks at Wyatt’s jeans, at his own, trying to get them off, wanting as much skin between them as possible. Wyatt keens again and rucks Flynn’s shirt up, like he’s just so desperate to get his hands on Flynn’s bare skin that he doesn’t care.

This is what keeps Flynn coming back. Even if the rest is torture, this—this is honest, this is Wyatt in his bare truth, wanting Flynn and doing anything to have him, and this is what Flynn holds onto when he struggles to remember why he puts himself through the other ninety percent of it.

He sits back up and helps Wyatt up as well, yanking Wyatt’s shirt up as Wyatt shivers. “You look a little cold there.”

“You’re an asshole,” Wyatt snaps, but he helps Flynn out of his shirt and gives the lie away by adding, “c’mon, kiss me, please, Fl—”

Flynn hates that Wyatt never says his first name, but he doesn’t dare ask for it, so he does as Wyatt asks and kisses him before he can hear his damn last name coming out of Wyatt’s mouth again.

Wyatt rakes his hands through Flynn’s hair, tugging, petting, his hips arching and thrusting wildly and Flynn has to slow down again, working his way down Wyatt’s body. “Relax for me,” he soothes, planting kisses everywhere he can. “Can’t do this properly unless you relax, tiger.”

“Oh my God, don’t call me that,” Wyatt gasps, but Flynn can hear the smile in his voice.

He tugs lightly on one of Wyatt’s nipples with his teeth and Wyatt hisses. “I think you like it.”

“I think I’m gonna have to do this myself if you don’t hurry the fuck up.”

Flynn sits up again and yanks Wyatt’s jeans down. “Oh, you want me to get to the main event do you?”

There’s a moment’s pause to grab some Vaseline from the bathroom, during which they finally get the rest of their damn clothes off, and Flynn wants to ask about moving this to the bedroom but… he doesn’t want to spook Wyatt. Not now.

Instead he just kicks Wyatt’s legs open. “You might want to bite down on a pillow.”

“Bite down on a pillow? Why the hell would I want to—”

Flynn bends down and licks up Wyatt’s cock.

Wyatt yelps.

Ha. Victory.

He stays with Wyatt’s cock at first, and they’ve done this, oh yes they have, and he’s pretty damn sure that nothing is better than instructing Wyatt while Wyatt’s on his knees, eyes closed, diligently and eagerly working Flynn’s cock in and out of his mouth. Blowjobs are definitely one of their preferred past times.

It relaxes Wyatt right up, gets him comfortable, and soon Flynn’s able to move his mouth lower, to keep Wyatt moaning softly as Flynn starts to lick him open.

“Wh—hoookay, okay,” Wyatt’s quickly getting with the program, and his hips are hitching softly, working against Flynn’s mouth.

Flynn grabs the lotion, slicks himself up, and Wyatt outright moans when he feels that first touch. He’s still holding onto Flynn’s hair, tugging on it, and it gets Flynn hotter than he’d like to admit, grinding against the cushion as he keeps at it, working Wyatt open.

Dammit, he’s going to have to wash the damn couch after this.

“Flynn, c’mon, Flynn please.” Wyatt’s squirming on two fingers and yanking on Flynn’s hair, on his own hair, pinching his nipples, clawing at the couch.

“Mmm, you sure?” He pulls back, twisting his fingers, searching, curling—it has to be right—here—

Wyatt groans and his entire body jerks, his toes curling, legs starting to tuck into himself, like it’s too much. “Oh God I’m sure I’m sure I’m sure, I’m—oh fucking motherfuck—”

Flynn can feel a savage, sinful grin stretching his face wide. “Yeah, I’d say you’re ready.”

He withdraws his fingers and Wyatt tugs at him, but Flynn turns him over. “It’s going to be easier this way, unless you want to be on top.”

“You think putting me in charge of this is a good idea?” Wyatt snarks.

Flynn delivers a quick smack to his ass and Wyatt gives this hilarious yelp-groan that Flynn loves. He discovered a bit ago, while they were making out with Wyatt in his lap, that Wyatt likes a little spanking.

Flynn is far from complaining about this.

Wyatt shivers once his back is to Flynn, like not being able to see is making the anticipation even worse. Flynn pets down his spine, kisses the back of his neck—soothes him once again, until Wyatt’s relaxed and Flynn can line himself up. He’s in real danger of blowing his load in just a few thrusts, so he has to take a second to think about dead kittens and that time he and Matej and Stiv startled a skunk and he had to bathe in tomato juice for hours before he can start to slide in.

When at last he does, Wyatt gives off this _noise_ that makes Flynn bite down on the back of Wyatt’s shoulder. Shit. Shit, it’s been literal years, and Wyatt’s tight and trembling, and Flynn is in real danger of hurting him if he’s not careful.

“Hey, hey, easy, tiger, what’d I say? Easy, relax, you’re doing good.” He gets a handful of Wyatt’s hair and turns him, tilts his head back, kisses him with everything he’s got.

He is so fucking sunk. Goddammit.

When he finally starts moving, Wyatt doesn’t keep quiet. He can’t seem to keep quiet for the life of him. Flynn can’t help himself, he starts speeding up, moving with abandon, chasing more of Wyatt’s noises. He can’t think outside of anything else, just chasing what he wants, that slick-sweet-sharp glide as Wyatt starts to actively push back, actively thrust in time, and Jesus Christ—

He slows down, wants to make sure Wyatt’s okay—and to be honest he needs to catch his breath for a second because he’s losing his mind a little here—and Wyatt gasps into the pillow like he’s dying. “Are—are you—are we—”

Flynn knows what Wyatt’s asking and oh, hell no. He presses closer to him, drawing his nose up along Wyatt’s neck just behind his ear, nipping at the shell. “Oh, no, I am far from finished with you.”

Wyatt shivers. Flynn wraps his arm around Wyatt’s waist and presses Wyatt more firmly against him, his hand brushing against Wyatt’s cock. Wyatt whines. “Flynn, _please_ …”

“I’ve got you.” He thrusts a few times deep and lazy and slow, just to remind Wyatt that he’s not done yet, he’s still got plenty of plans for him. “You might want to hold on.”

Wyatt snorts, then makes a strangled noise as Flynn starts up again. “Yes, fuck, okay, shit…”

Flynn bites down on Wyatt’s neck and Wyatt keens, shoves himself back again and again, and now it’s the two of them, moving together, and Flynn wishes like fucking hell that they could find a way to be like this in other areas, honestly, without this weird not-relationship, not talking about it, he wishes—he wishes—

Wyatt moans and comes all over the damn couch and it’s so absurd that Flynn chuckles, shoves himself in, and comes hard.

It’s the one time they properly fuck, and he hopes at the time it’ll be the first of many, one more step to being properly together…

But then it all goes to shit.

So it stays just the one time.

 

* * *

 

Lucy does feel a bit guilty that she hasn’t told the boys about this, but her knees are already shaking as she adjusts her dress in her seat.

Next to her, Jiya squeezes her hand. “You’re going to be great,” she promises in an excited whisper.

Emma taps her fingers against the table impatiently. “Let’s put it this way, you can’t be worse than that stand-up comic that just went. Jesus Christ, that girl needs therapy.”

“I’m going to be better than the girl who said she wanted to fuck dogs, thanks, Emma, that is the height of motivational speaking.”

It was Emma and Jiya’s idea that she start doing this. Stanford, like every college campus, has plenty of social opportunities and more clubs than you can shake a stick at, but Lucy’s had a hard time finding a rhythm with the place when she’s the same age as the staff. She can listen to the stories of her classmates’ escapades with fondness, but she can no longer relate in that immediate, empathetic way that they’re looking for. Simply put, she is not going to go out to a frat party or pull another all-nighter, not if she can help it. She’s thirty-four years old. It’s her damn hard-won privilege.

But Emma and Jiya insisted that something social had to be done, and after they learned Lucy can sing—it’s the beginning of the end. So here she is, at Stanford’s monthly open mic night, ready to go up and, well, do some singing.

Or she might just get up there and vomit all over the microphone. It’s a toss-up.

“Hey, sorry I’m late!” Jess whispers, sitting down.

Wyatt will kill her if he finds out she invited Jess before she invited him, but Lucy just needs women tonight. She needs her close female friends, that camaraderie that can only be found in a group of women. And besides, she needs there to not be anyone watching her that she’s got romantic feelings for, even if she now knows those feelings are unrequited.

Emma looks up, sees Jess, and drops her beer bottle.

It shatters on the floor. Nobody notices.

“Hi,” Jess whispers. She waves at Jiya, then Emma. “I’m Jess.”

“You’re Jess.” Emma sounds a bit strangled.

“Lucy’s told us all about you,” Jiya says, elbowing Emma.

Lucy did not plan this, but she’s finding the whole thing hilarious. Jess is wearing a pair of jeans that look like they’ve been painted onto her, a low-cut tank top, leather boots, and a jacket to match. All that’s missing is the motorcycle.

“All bad things, I hope,” Jess says with a low, throaty laugh.

Emma looks like she’s two seconds away from either committing suicide or yanking Jess into her lap and Lucy knows that it’s nerves but she can’t stop giggling for the life of her. She doesn’t know Jess’s sexuality, or rather she didn’t, but Jess is currently propping her feet up onto the table and looking at Emma like she’s daring Emma to spank her for it and Lucy would literally bet her life that Jess is far from straight.

There’s some polite clapping from the crowd, and both Jess and Jiya elbow her. “You’re on!”

“Thanks, guys,” she mutters. If this goes sideways, and if she actually survives it going sideways, she’s going to murder them.

“Next,” the emcee says, one of the seniors who actually tells rather good jokes in between the sets, “we have the lovely Miss Lucy Preston…”

He says something else, a crack about the history department, but Lucy literally can’t hear it with all the blood rushing in her head as she steps up onto the stage.

The last time she did this she was literally in college for the first time. It’s like stepping back fourteen years, to being twenty, to being young and fresh-faced and falling in love with the way the crowd looks at her, the way they hold their breath, the way the music thrums in her body.

She doesn’t want to make a career of out this, at least not anymore, but she’s always going to get a kick out of it.

Which is where her first song came from, actually.

If she introduces herself she’s going to get nervous and fuck up the entire thing. _Just walk out there, grab the mic, and belt it,_ Emma had said. _Who the fuck cares what you say before?_

Lucy shakes out her hands, prays her vocal warm up from earlier still holds and that her nerves haven’t screwed her over, strides across the stage, and grabs the mic.

“I get no kick from champagne…”

 

* * *

 

Flynn frowns up at the bar. Is this the right address?

“You too, huh?” Wyatt says, walking up.

Flynn gestures at the building. “Did Jiya tell you why we should be here?”

“No, just something about kicking my ass if I didn’t show up in time.” Wyatt flushes as Flynn holds the door open for him and they step inside.

“She told me to stay in the back.”

“Same here.”

It’s packed in here, wall to wall, so standing in the back is really the only option they have anyway. Luckily with his height Flynn can see over the heads of pretty much everyone. Wyatt has to shuffle a little to find the perfect angle, and he glares at Flynn when Flynn chuckles at him for it.

He wants to put his arm around Wyatt, but he’s not sure how well that would go over.

Someone’s up on stage, cracking wise, and it takes Flynn a moment to realize this is the master of ceremonies. He tries to crane his head, but he can’t see Jiya or anyone else that he recognizes. Given that Jiya was probably smart and came early enough to get a proper seat at one of the tables, he’s not surprised.

He is surprised, however, that Lucy wasn’t also brought here by Jiya. Then again, Lucy’s started having something on Thursday nights that she’s not really talking about. It’s not Flynn’s place to wonder but… but he does wonder, when she comes home so late with flushed cheeks and sparkles in her eyes, he wonders if maybe…

But no, if Lucy found someone in her life that way, she’d tell him, wouldn’t she?

Or maybe not, not if she knows—and he’s been so obvious that she must know—and Lucy of all people, always considerate of others, she would be worried about hurting him—

Then the emcee says a name that has Flynn’s heart stopping.

“And now, yes, I’m finally letting you all see what you came here for, you can all stop pretending you care about the rest of us… Lucy Preston!”

Lucy, Lucy in a beautiful red dress, Lucy looking stunning, Lucy laughing as everyone claps…

Wyatt’s jaw has dropped so far down that Flynn could probably fit his whole damn hand in the space, and he doesn’t blame Wyatt one bit for it. He’s pretty sure his face is about the same.

“All right, all right, settle down you miscreants,” Lucy says.

Flynn has never heard her sound so confident or so relaxed in front of people. This is Lucy being the way that she deserves to be—in control, poised, ready for whatever comes her way. She’s luminous, and Flynn feels like he’s seeing her for the first time all over again, like he’s seeing her in São Paulo, only this time she’s not weighed down by guilt or grief.

Lucy clears her throat. “Why don’t we start with something a little… sassy? I got a couple requests from some classmates this week… I’m sure I don’t need to name the names of the ex-boyfriends…”

“Is she _publicly shaming_ asshole ex-boyfriends!?” Wyatt whispers hoarsely.

Flynn has never wanted to kiss anyone more badly in his life than he wants to kiss Lucy right now.

Lucy smirks. “Cinderella’s on her bedroom floor, she’s got a, crush on the guy at the liquor store… ‘cause Mr. Charming don’t come home anymore, and she forgets why she came here…”

He’s never heard Lucy sing before. Her voice is sultry and sassy and just plain fun, and she knows what she’s doing, making it soft or sharp by turns, and when she gets to the bridge she doesn’t hesitate for a second, nailing the high note and daring to belt it, sending the entire room into fits. At some point Wyatt starts digging his nails into Flynn’s arm, the rest of him frozen, and Flynn doesn’t care one bit. Lucy is electric, alive, more alive than he’s seen her in months, more alive than she’s been since he carried her out of the Mothership, and for the first time in five years he wants to get on his knees and thank—thank someone, anyone, because this, this is the Lucy he’s been hoping would reemerge.

The applause when she finishes is deafening. Flynn claps along, his hands feeling like lead, stunned beyond belief. Wyatt is taking in great gulps of air and before he can think better of it he squeezes Wyatt’s hand where it still digs into his arm.

Wyatt glances at him out of the corner of his eye and then looks away, neither acknowledging the touch nor shying away from it.

Once the applause dies down, Lucy does another song, this one _You Made Me Love You_ , her voice soaring on the _gimme gimme_ in a way that tugs at Flynn’s heart viciously. He can hear the yearning in her voice, and that—that must be why everyone loves her. It’s why he loves her. Lucy’s genuine, she’s open and raw and genuine to her core and she wears all of herself on her sleeve and it’s terrifying, because someone could hurt her with that, but he also can’t help but admire it, because God knows, it’s been easier for him to retreat into self-disdain than to try and reach yet again for a happy ending.

Easier to close himself off than to dare to think others might want him, because the fear that they will hate him the way he’s learned to hate himself is overpowering.

“Okay, okay, one last song,” Lucy promises. “I can’t hog the stage all night. This one…”

She pauses, and looks out over the audience, but Flynn knows she’s not seeing anything that’s actually in front of her.

“My mom used to sing this one to me, when I was little. It used to be one of my favorites.”

Flynn knows—the whole audience knows, even if they don’t know the particulars and don’t know why they know—that this is a big step for Lucy. This is important to her.

In a soft voice, crooning, so much softer than before, she starts singing.

“I wished on the moon, for something I never knew…”

From this song, the way her voice works, the way her mouth moves, it’s clear that at some point Lucy got classical training. Not that it really matters one way or another. Not when she’s singing this song and making it somehow, despite the lyrics, seem to be about redemption. About grace.

It’s a song about asking for something from the moon, asking for a softer tomorrow, asking for dreams to come true, asking for the touch of something divine. And instead of a miracle, instead of anything magical, instead what the singer gets is ‘you’. The person they’re singing to.

For weeks now, in therapy and at home, he’s been trying to find a way to look himself in the eye in the mirror. Trying to find a way to salvage something of himself. To feel like he’s worth saving, worth living, worth loving. He’s prayed to God for answers, and gotten back silence—and doubted everything he was taught, because if he could go back and change time, then doesn’t that mean nothing is set in stone? There is no such thing as fate, or a divine plan? Doesn’t that make him a god? And if he is a god, then what is God Himself?

But what if this whole time he was asking for a piece of the moon—and instead he got Lucy?

What if God led him to her?

Lucy finishes the song, and unlike before, there’s silence. It’s like the whole audience is under her spell. Lucy herself is staring out at all of them, and this time, he can tell she’s seeing them, each person, or as much as she can of them when they’re in darkness and all the lights are on her.

Her eyes fall on him.

Flynn can’t be sure that she’s really seeing him. He’s all the way in the back, swathed in darkness. But he is tall. She could, possibly…

Lucy blinks, and looks away, smiling down at everyone as people start to clap.

Wyatt lets go of his arm and takes a small step to the side, as if he’s finally realizing how closely, intimately, they’re standing and he needs to scream _no homo_ with his body language as loudly as he possibly can.

That’s—a problem for tomorrow.

Right now he… he reaches down, and without even thinking about it, like he’s in a trance, he wraps the fingers of his right hand around the ring finger of his left.

If Lucy, or Wyatt, or anyone else notices his bare hand when they all greet each other afterward, Lucy crying a little as he and Wyatt hug her and congratulate her, nobody says anything.

His wedding ring goes in the top drawer of his dresser that night.


	11. Chapter 11

Wyatt doesn’t realize how little stuff he has until it’s time to pack it.

Flynn helps him organize everything. Most of it Wyatt doesn’t want to keep, it’s just bare-bones furniture and not much of it at that—a couch, a bed, a bedside table, a few kitchen appliances.

It’s pathetic, honestly. But if Flynn thinks so, he’s kind enough not to say it. They donate the furniture to the local Goodwill and then it’s just Wyatt’s suitcase of clothes, two boxes worth of books and memorabilia, and that’s it.

“Not much for a life, right?”

Flynn hefts up one of the boxes. “I mean, nothing in our apartment was mine. Or Lucy’s. I had nothing of my old life and neither did she. We had to get all new stuff. Make a new life. And now it’s your place too.”

“My whole life was Jess. It’s all her. And now…” Now he’s nothing.

“Now you’re becoming who you want to be, without defining yourself by just your relationships,” Flynn says. His voice is firm, brooking no argument.

Wyatt wants to snap something, because he feels raw and vulnerable, scrubbed down, down, down into the very heart of him, but he knows that Flynn is doing the same thing. Lucy is doing the same thing. They’re all becoming someone new. They all died when Flynn shot John Rittenhouse. Lucy died. Flynn died. Just like that. And then Wyatt came home, and saw Jess, and decided to die too.

They all fell into a pyre and prayed they’d turn out to be phoenixes.

Lucy certainly is. She’s rising, rising, rising, he saw that last week with Flynn at her open mic night. She was a star then. Well, Wyatt always thinks she’s a star, but she proved it that night. She’s getting her degree, making friends, rebuilding. Flynn is… he’s trying. Going to therapy, working, hanging out with Rufus, calling his dad every so often for a Skype conversation.

Wyatt isn’t sure yet if he made it. If he grew wings. Mostly, he still feels like he’s burning.

He nods at Flynn, because Flynn is raw, too, and knows how it feels, and he picks up the other box and follows Flynn to the door and down to the car.

They drive in silence, Flynn drumming out a tune on the steering wheel. Wyatt can’t stop staring at Flynn’s hands, his fingers.

He’ll die before he admits it, die painful and slow, but that was how he first started looking at Flynn and thinking, _oh no, this is something, this is a fire._

Flynn’s hand wrapped around a beer bottle, his fingers sliding over his desk, drumming out a song on the arm of the couch, wielding a knife or a spatula in the kitchen. He still can’t stop staring even now, the knowledge of how those fingers feel inside him or wrapped around his throat, spanning his back, tangled up with his own—it just makes it so much worse.

If he ever had the idea that fucking Flynn would get him out of his system, he’s been proven dead wrong.

“So where are we putting everything?” Flynn asks as they park and get the stuff up.

They’re home. They’re _home_. This is Wyatt’s now. It belongs to him.

So why does he feel like a stray dog brought inside that has to behave or he’ll get sent back to the animal shelter?

“Um… I don’t know, where does Lucy want all the books?” Wyatt sets his box down and looks around. There’s plenty of empty space on the shelves, Lucy and Flynn are still adding to their collection—mostly history books and historical fiction for Lucy, along with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Flynn’s got fantasy, Jane Austen, and Wilde.

Neither of them will own up to owning the Byron and both of them claim ownership of _Frankenstein_.

Wyatt’s own books are things like Clancy and Stephen King and he feels really plebian right about now.

“Sure thing. What about your clothes?”

Wyatt looks over at Flynn. “I, uh…”

“I was thinking…” Flynn shifts his weight and clears his throat—and Wyatt realizes with an odd jolt in his stomach that Flynn is actually nervous.

He can’t remember the last time that he saw Flynn nervous. Actually, he’s not sure he’s ever seen him nervous.

“Lucy said we’d get a new bed for the room we share but. I was thinking that we could just… why get a new bed, right?” Flynn’s staring at him, his eyes a pale green color, the way they get when Flynn’s standing in just the right light, and Wyatt’s heart constricts but he can also feel his gorge rising, can feel bile staining the inside of his throat, and he—

“What—what are you suggesting,” he manages. His voice sounds like a dying frog croaking.

“I’m suggesting that we stop relegating this just to hooking up on the couch or the shower and start actually being honest about what we are and what we want.”

Wyatt doesn’t mean to give a laugh, but one bubbles up anyway, hysterical and small. “What—what we are? We’re not—we’re not anything, we’re… no.”

Flynn looks like someone just threw an entire piano at him and told him to catch it. “We’re not anything? Wyatt—sorry, I thought you were the guy I was fucking this whole time, was I mistaken?”

“You—”

“I told you, this isn’t casual, I don’t do _casual_ , Wyatt, what did you fucking think that I meant by that?”

“I don’t know! I guess—” He feels like he’s stuck in a fire—not burning, not yet, but all the oxygen’s gone from the room and it’s nothing but smoke. “We’re friends, okay? We’re friends who care about each other and we also—also do stuff together.”

“Oh my God.” Flynn lets out a stream of what is undoubtedly swearing, but it’s all in rapid-fire Croatian and Wyatt can’t even begin to make hide or tail of it. “Friends? Who do stuff together? Wyatt I—”

Flynn cuts himself off, his eyes going wide, and then turns away, rubbing his hand across his face. “Are you. This is over—is this about your goddamn sexuality? Wyatt I don’t give a fuck what you call yourself, but we—we are not—this is not, we’re—”

Wyatt doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Yeah right. I’m well aware what I am, Flynn, it’s called a holdover. A pit stop.”

“A pit stop!?” Now Flynn sounds a little hysterical. “On my way to what?”

“Lucy!” Wyatt might actually pass out. “Jesus Christ, you think I don’t know? You’re so in love with her it’s actually fucking insane.”

“I am not—Lucy doesn’t—”

“Don’t you try to tell me you’re not dying over her, Flynn.”

“What do you want me to say!?” Flynn seems to realize he’s yelling and tones his voice down. “That she brings the oxygen with her? That when she leaves she takes the air too? None of it fucking matters—”

“Why not? Huh? You’re fucking me, Flynn, I think it matters! You gotta tell her!”

“How—this isn’t about me, it’s about you! Us! Not Lucy! And besides I—I can’t tell her—”

“What about that book you were reading, huh? What, you won’t tell her how you feel but you’ll read a book all about pining after a woman like it’s the end of the world?”

“What?”

“Werther, Flynn, I read it in high school, I had to fuckin’ memorize parts of it for my oral exam final.”

Flynn laughs roughly. “Oh, you memorized Werther. Sure you did.”

“ _I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner._ ”

Flynn gapes at him. “You really do have it memorized.”

“I’m not some dumb hick, Flynn.”

“I’ve never thought that you were but holy mother of God, you’re sure doing a great job of it right now with this shit.” Flynn storms around like he’s looking for an exit, a tiger caught in a cage. “Maybe I’m in love with Lucy and maybe it’s obvious but you’re in love with her too, don’t even deny it.” He steps closer, his eyes blazing now like a roiling sea. “I am not doing this, I am not going to be your dirty secret, I am not going to be your experiment, I am not—no.”

“Well I’m not—”

“You’re not what, Wyatt? You’re fucked up, so am I—”

“But that’s just the thing, Flynn. You’re not fucked up.” Fuck, he’s crying, and he’s not trying to, he doesn’t want to, but he can’t fucking stop it. He might throw up. “You’re the best guy I know.”

“Okay, first of all, Rufus is the best guy we know—”

“Fair. But you are not—you’re the only one this whole time who had his head on straight. And I’m… I can’t, I don’t have that. And I can’t get it on straight while you’re—while you’re messing with it, while these thoughts are messing with it—”

“These _thoughts_!? Are you even hearing yourself?” Flynn paces some more. “Christ, don’t think I don’t know that Lucy’s a diversion right now, this is not about her, this is about us, this is about how you won’t look me in the eye, you won’t let me touch you unless we’re in the middle of getting each other off, I’m not asking for a goddamn proposal here I’m just asking—”

“Oh, right, like Lucy doesn’t matter in this. You asshole, you’ll only be with me because you think we’re both messed up, she’s just too good for you, she’s too good for me, but I’m not too good for you? I can read between the lines, Flynn!”

Flynn blinks, stutters, gapes like cold water’s been dumped on him. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Sure it isn’t.” Wyatt feels like flames are licking at his feet. “You won’t subject Lucy to you, you won’t put her through that, but me, sure, I’m fair game, because I’m just the sorry asshole that fucked up his entire life so you’ll deign to fuck me.”

“I want a relationship with you, you son of a bitch, and you’re trying to twist it around so that it sounds like I don’t care about you?”

“I’m asking you, why is she too good for you and I’m not? What is it about me that means that—if you think you’re messed up—”

“I’m not!” Flynn bellows. “I mean, I am, yes, but—Christ. Lucy doesn’t want me, okay?”

“I’m not like you!” It bursts out of him like water once a dam breaks. “I can’t be—I’m not. I’m not. I fall in love with women, I like women, I’m not—”

“Fine.” Flynn shrugs. Everything is drained out of him, like a puppet with his strings cut. He looks pale and haggard and older than Wyatt’s ever seen him. He knows, logically, that Flynn’s about eight years older, but he doesn’t really feel it. Now, though…

“You want to call this a fucking… if you’ll…” Flynn shakes his head. “Just get out.”

“Fine.” He shouldn’t be around Flynn anyway, he shouldn’t have started this, he shouldn’t have—he’s panicking and he knows and Jess knows but saying it out loud—Flynn, everyone, anyone knows—it’s different. He shouldn’t have started this. He can’t do this, he can’t, not with everything else he’s changing and burning and he’s not like Lucy and Flynn, he’s not a phoenix, he’s just another corpse on the pyre.

Flynn doesn’t move, forcing Wyatt to walk around him, like if Wyatt’s really going to do this then Flynn’s going to make it as uncomfortable for him as possible, as awkward as possible, and Wyatt kind of hates him for it but also kind of admires him because Flynn’s certainly not the one running out the door. He’s the coward here, they both know it, and he’s fully accepting it even as he runs.

He ends up at Mason Industries, of all places. In the hanger bay where two time machines still sit.

The Lifeboat is getting an upgrade—it needs to be able to fit five people for one thing so that it can match the Mothership—but the Mothership itself is mostly just being used for study. It’s after work, so they’re covered in tarp, but Wyatt doesn’t mind. The quiet soothes him.

This is where it all started. He can remember standing up here, looking out over all of it, leaning on the handrails just like he’s doing now. Back then he was so sure of who he was. Back then, he’d been ready to die. Praying for it. It wasn’t suicide, but it was a death wish, and it was shocking how close those two were, fraternal twins of self-harm.

He’d stood on this very spot and had hoped that he would die and join Jess. _You understand that you might not be coming back,_ Denise had told him. _There’s no guarantee of a return trip._

_That won’t be a problem, ma’am._

It really hadn’t been.

Every time they’d gone on a mission, he had been ready for it. And then, slowly, with Lucy… she’d been like a cornerstone. Something solid he could touch. After the Alamo. That was when—that was when he started thinking maybe he wasn’t so ready to die after all. He had Lucy. And he had Rufus, his first civilian friend in years, someone who wasn’t an army buddy, and he’d thought, _hey, just maybe…_

Now, though. Now he kind of wishes he’d died after all.

Because before all of this, he knew who he was. He was Wyatt Logan, Delta Force. He was the soldier. He protected the good guys. It was black and white, cut and dried. He loved Jess, he mourned her, he missed her. He followed orders, he shot the bad guys, it was all good.

Then Flynn shot John and the whole world spun a different direction and now he doesn’t know who he is.

He could be anyone. There’s no rules anymore. A planet out of orbit.

Flynn—has Flynn only really been with him because he thinks he can’t have Lucy? Because he’s satisfying himself with second place? And the guy has the gall to get mad at Wyatt?

“Mr. Logan.”

Wyatt jumps, his heart hammering.

Mason is standing there, a bottle of what looks like very expensive whisky in hand. “I thought I was the only one who came here to brood.”

“Ah, sorry, I was just… um.”

“It really puts everything into perspective, doesn’t it?” Mason walks over and offers Wyatt the bottle.

Oh what the hell. He takes a pull from it.

…that is very expensive whisky. Hello.

Mason chuckles. “They say the Japanese are making great strides and all that but I’m a traditionalist. If I’m caught drinking anything other than proper scotch I think my ancestors might rise up and kill me.”

“What exactly are you doing here?” Wyatt gestures at the two time machines. “You’ve got two time machines, no evil society breathing down your neck, a few billion dollars and a penthouse in San fucking Francisco.”

“Two time machines I can’t use,” Mason corrects. “Because if I do, the pilots will die horrible deaths.”

Wyatt’s blood freezes.

Mason chuckles sardonically. “Ah, yes. I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you all. We got the results back. Good thing you all stopped hopping about the timelines when you did. And that we got you all tested so soon. To put it in laymen’s terms… you know why astronauts only go up into space for short periods? Why you only get one or two missions?”

“Something about the lack of gravity.” He remembers an episode of _Bones_ about it. And in _World War Z_ , one of the characters is an astronaut who stays up in space for three years or something and when he comes back to earth he only lives a few short years, in pain the whole time.

It’s one of Jess’s favorite books. She calls it ‘a masterpiece of speculative reporting’.

Mason nods. “After your body’s been without gravity for so long, putting it back in… well. Jumping through time and space, I’m sure you can imagine that does things that are even more bloody crazy than that to your cells. Each jump was… well I don’t know the exact math. Equivalent to a certain amount of time in space. So if you kept doing it enough…”

“We’d end up like astronauts who’d been up there for years.”

Mason nods. “The pain you’d be in… the pain that she must’ve been in…”

Lucy. The Lucy from the journal.

In pain, Rittenhouse winning, probably dying from time travel fucking up her biology, grieving the loss of her team, and she took the risk of jumping on her own timeline—knowing it would drive her insane or kill her—on the chance that Flynn would somehow pull this crazy stunt off and stop Rittenhouse, change everything.

Wyatt doesn’t know which of them he admires more. He’s in love with two equally crazy sons of bitches.

Mason shakes himself a little. “Anyway. Time travel’s off for now, then, until we can work around that not-so-little snafu. What brings you here?”

Wyatt shrugs.

Mason jostles him. “Ah, come on now, you look rather like Rufus when I told him we couldn’t egg Elon Musk’s house.”

Wyatt snorts. Yeah, Rufus would be upset about something like that. “Honestly, it’s not something you’d care about.” He and Mason aren’t exactly friends. Mason’s his boss, not really anything more.

Mason’s gaze gets a little less boozy-foggy and a little sharper. “Try me.”

All right then. “I think I’m…” _If you can’t say it in front of the man you love, how can you say it in front of a guy you barely know?_

And yet it’s easier, almost, to say it to Mason, because he doesn’t give a shit about Mason’s answer or what Mason thinks.

“Look, a bit ago I realized that I’m… that I like guys. Or one guy, in particular. The same way I like women. And I’ve been… fuck.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Every time that I try to think about it I can just… it’s not easy to shut off all the voices in your head, y’know? I grew up in motherfucking Texas, in a small town, and even if… I mean the townsfolk weren’t out with their pitchforks every day chanting _kill the fags_ or whatever but it just wasn’t something you were. It wasn’t something you did.”

Mason’s eyes are unusually dark, his face unusually still, as he watches Wyatt. Wyatt waits for him to laugh or to roll his eyes, cut in with a smart remark, but he never does.

“And it hurts. It hurts so fucking much.” He wipes at his eyes. “Because every time I want to say it out loud, every time I—I look at this guy and fuck it’s like my heart’s not even in my chest anymore and I smile like a fuckin’—like I’m high as a fucking kite. But then this—this sick feeling comes up and I want to vomit. And I feel so… so ashamed even though I know… I know I shouldn’t be, I know it’s okay now, but it doesn’t feel okay. I still feel…” He sucks in a deep, desperate breath. “I still feel broken and dirty.”

Mason sighs, leans against the railing. “Did Rufus ever tell you how he and I met?”

Wyatt shakes his head.

Mason gives a small smile, nodding. “It was at a high school science fair competition. Kids fought like gladiators to earn a spot. And this one kid, this gangly hoodie-toting nerd, impressed me with his work. So I asked if I could take him out for a bite to eat. I’d been trying to find some bright young minds to mold, and he seemed like a good candidate. And you know what he said to me?”

Wyatt shakes his head.

“He told me he couldn’t come with me, because he had promised to go and see his brother’s basketball game.” Mason grins wider at the memory, his eyes shining, staring off into the distance. “I knew right then I needed that kid on my team. The kind of person who wasn’t impressed by wealth or power, or reputation, the kind of person who stuck to his promise, who was responsible… they’re hard to find, you know. From that day forward I mentored him.”

Wyatt had no clue where this is going, but he tries to listen with patience, even if his insides are squirming hot and uncomfortable and he wants to snatch that bottle from Mason and down the entire thing, drown in it.

He used to do that with Jess, though. Use alcohol to cope with the memories of his dad, of the war, used it and abused it and let it fuel his jealous temper. He can’t dive back down there again.

He keeps listening instead.

“The thing is,” Mason says, still looking off at some far-distant spot, “before I met Rufus, I lived in a mansion. Had the exotic cars. Different party, different woman every night. I knew everyone. But I… I didn’t really know anyone.”

He looks up at Wyatt. “I didn’t love anyone.”

“And that was a good thing?”

“No.” Mason’s voice is quiet but empathetic. “The thing is, before Rufus, I thought I was broken.”

Wyatt’s breath hitches. Mason’s staring into Wyatt like he can see Wyatt’s black rotten moldy soul.

“I spent my whole life watching the movies, the TV shows, reading the books, hearing everyone talk about finding the one, about kissing under the moonlight and holding hands, and I didn’t give a shit about any of it. I tried. Never worked. I liked sex well enough, so everyone thought I was just your average playboy billionaire philanthropist.” Mason chuckles at his own joke. “But I knew, inside, that I was broken. That I was just hiding and playing a game and wearing a mask. I got tested for Antisocial Personality Disorder. That’s the official term for sociopathy and psychopathy and all that. I just. Didn’t love.

“And then I meet this boy, and I love him. I love him so much. I think of him as my son, I wish he was my son. And I realized… I could love. I was never going to want that kiss in the moonlight, I was never going to do the whole… romance thing. But I wasn’t broken. I had someone to love, I had my family, and it was Rufus. And, well, Jiya now too.” Mason smiles again, and this time it’s wondrous, like he’s gazing up at a starry night sky for the first time. “I had people to love, Mr. Logan, and I was happy. I am happy. I have my son.

“I will never understand what Rufus feels when he looks at Jiya. Or what you feel when you look at your man. But that’s all right. It’s not for me. Just like you don’t love Rufus like I do. But it’s still love. And y’know, I tried to talk myself out of it. My father was a complete bastard. The only good thing I owe him is dying early so I could turn his assets liquid and turn them over to make my first ten million. God rest his soul.”

Mason toasts downwards, between his feet, and Wyatt chuckles a bit in spite of himself.

“My father would be ashamed of who I am today,” Mason notes. “And that means I’m living the right life. If you let their shame dictate your choices after you’ve escaped from them, then they’re still winning. They still have power over you. And the last thing I want is for that bastard to have any power over me.”

Wyatt… never thought of it that way.

“But I’m sorry, I got a bit off track.” Mason takes another pull from the bottle. “I tried to talk myself out of mentoring Rufus. Told myself I would bugger it up. Ruin him. But I stuck it out. You know I once flew from Japan to see him at MIT? Poor bugger had a breakdown. And I was sitting on the plane and thinking about how I’d just left the middle of an important business deal for this—this ridiculous smartass teenager and I didn’t regret it, and I thought, well, sod it if I fuck it up, at least I’m doing it because I love him.”

_At least I’m doing it because I love him._

Wyatt knows he’s staring but he can’t exactly make himself stop. “What if you did mess it up, then?”

“Well, I figure, better to do it because you loved the person then because you loved your fear even more.” Mason shrugs. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. You know, it’s shocking how we’ll do the riskiest things for our businesses but we won’t ever even think about risking a tiny part of ourselves for love. Rather messed up, if you ask me.”

His voice is small and cracking as he speaks, and he feels fourteen-years-old again, young and inexperienced and just hitting puberty, with everything that’s happening in his heart and body new and scary. “I don’t want that bastard to own me.”

Mason nods, and Wyatt can tell that Mason knows he means his own father.

“But I’m—I fucked up everything else I touched. How do I know I won’t hurt him?”

“You don’t.” Mason’s tone is blunt. “You willingly climbed into a time machine though, and that’s worked out pretty well for you so far. Your bones aren’t soup.”

“I had nothing to lose when I did that.”

“You have nothing to lose now.” Mason pauses. “Or rather, you have everything to lose, and I’ve always thought that was so much more powerful. They say a man with nothing left is the one who fights harder but that’s all bollocks. If you’ve got everything to lose, then you have to go all out, because if you don’t fight with everything you’ve got you’ll lose it all. Nothing to lose, it’s a lark, a game. Everything to lose—now that’s a real fight. You see what people are made of when something real is at stake.”

Wyatt grips the handrail. Mason gives him a look that is far too knowing. “Tell me, Mr. Logan, when was the last time you actually fought for yourself instead of just someone else’s orders?”

“Did too much fighting for myself, if you ask my ex-wife.” But the moment he says it he knows it’s not true.

He grabbed, selfishly and greedily. He took Jess, he took alcohol, he took and took and took but did he really fight for anything? Take a stand? Or did he just snatch and cling because he thought he wasn’t worth anything and if he actually put himself on the line, everyone would see what a loser he was and he’d end up with nothing?

Wasn’t that the whole reason why he never did couples’ therapy with Jess?

If he’d stayed and gone to therapy, he would’ve been fighting for their relationship. But when you fight, you risk losing. And he’d been too terrified to lose.

Mason must see something of Wyatt’s thoughts on his face, because he does a slow, exaggerated nod. “Ah-ha.”

“Don’t ah-ha me.” Wyatt feels entitled to a little bit of surliness.

“I think I’m allowed to be a bit smug, I just helped you have a little personal revelation, didn’t I?”

Wyatt snatches the bottle from Mason and takes another pull, passing it back. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

“So are you going to go and… fix whatever mess it was that brought you here?”

Wyatt drums his fingers on the handrail. “Not sure if I can. I… I was a real asshole back there.”

“I’m sure you were. I’ve been a real arse to Rufus and he’s managed to forgive me each time.”

“No offense, Mason, but you and Rufus weren’t fucking. And you and Rufus aren’t also both in love with the same woman.”

“And, what, you think you can’t have both? If you’re in love with him and you’re both in love with her—you know what _ménage à trois_ means, don’t you?”

“I think you’re missing an important component.”

“Which is?”

“He’s not in love with me.”

Mason shakes his head as if this is the funniest thing that he’s ever heard. “And he said that, did he? Right out? Told you he didn’t love you?”

“He might as well have.”

“Well did you tell him that you were in love with him?”

“I couldn’t even say I was bi, you think I told him I loved him?”

Mason tilts his head. “Well look at that, you just said it out loud.”

He did, didn’t he? That’s something, Wyatt supposes.

Mason takes a small step closer. “Look, I know it’s not my business. But I’m not stupid and I’m far from blind. I don’t feel romantic love, but I know it when I see it in other people. And Flynn is very much in love with you.”

Wyatt’s jaw literally drops open. “I—you—I never—”

“You didn’t have to say his name.” Mason’s eyes are fucking twinkling like this is the funniest shit he’s ever been party to. “We can all see how he looks at you. How you look at him. I do believe there’s a betting pool about you two.”

Wyatt is never coming into work again. Ever. In fact, he’s going to go right now and jump off the goddamn Golden Gate Bridge.

Mason takes a step back. “You’re not broken, Wyatt. And if you keep thinking that and deny yourself what you know will make you happy, then all the bastards who fucked you over win. They win, and they get the last laugh. And I know you don’t want that. Own who you are. Because nobody can love the way you love, and nobody can love the people in your life the way that you love them.”

He raises his bottle in a silent toast, and then turns and heads back down the walkway, presumably towards his office.

Wyatt wants to agree with him. Wants to believe him. And a part of him does.

But a part of him also doesn’t feel like he can go home. If it even is his home anymore after what he said and did, after he was such an uncommunicative idiot again.

And if he can’t go home, there’s only one other place left.

 

* * *

 

Lucy taps her pencil against her notebook. Most of her classmates have computers, and she’s got one too, but she’s always liked writing things out in a notebook. The journal that she gave to Flynn was far from her first. It’s been a habit since she was eight and her mother gave her a lovely blue journal with pressed flowers on the cover, and she’s rather proud of her note taking. She uses different colored highlighters, and gel pens, and makes graphs and everything.

“And here we have an example of a photo welcoming Jewish refugees at Ellis Island…”

That’s another change. Another difference.

In the world that she knows, the history she knows, the United States refused to take in Jewish refugees trying to flee the Nazis and sent them back. The U.S. also refused to enter the war until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and made the whole thing personal. She’s ranted to Flynn about it for hours, she did a whole paper on pop culture in the 1930s that tried to stir up anti-Nazi sentiment like the political cartoons of Dr. Seuss and the creation of Captain America.

And the world has not gotten better in every way since Rittenhouse disappeared. People are still people and that means some of them are awful and Rittenhouse cannot be blamed for every single sin of humanity although it sure would be convenient to do so.

But this—this is one thing that apparently did get better, without Rittenhouse in play, and before she knows it her throat constricts and her heart is hammering and it’s like being trapped in that car all over again and her lungs are getting crushed.

Fuck. Fuck, she needs to get out of this room.

She grips the edge of her desk in one hand and her pencil in the other and doesn’t register a single thing the professor says until class is over and she can shove everything into her messenger bag—the messenger bag that Denise gave her, the _congratulations on getting in_ present—and she hustles out and onto the quad in the sunshine and she tries to find some way to stop shaking, to draw in air.

Flynn and Wyatt are picking up Wyatt’s stuff from his apartment so that Wyatt can move in this evening. Denise is seeing her daughter Olivia play Mimi in her high school production of RENT. She could call Jess, or Emma—if they’ve finally managed to stop fucking long enough to answer the damn phone, which is debatable seeing as the moment Lucy’s singing was done they disappeared into the parking lot to have sex in Jess’s car for an hour—she could call Jiya, too, but…

She wants to talk to someone who actually was in a time machine. She wants to call someone who understands.

Rufus, God bless him, picks up on the second ring. “Hey, Lucy, how’s it going?”

“C-could you come and walk with me?” Fuck, she’s stuttering, this is bad. She’s not even sure why this, of all days, of all moments, is setting her off so much. Maybe it’s that Dad told her once they had some Jewish ancestors (although if he’s not her biological father, who knows if it even counts). Maybe it’s the reminder that her entire existence is breaking the laws of the universe. Maybe it’s the fact that her family on both sides are responsible for being America’s chief white supremacists for hundreds of years.

She doesn’t know. She just knows that she’s outside and she still, somehow, can’t breathe.

“Hey, yeah, hold on, just got off work, you okay?”

“No.” The word is whispered. “No, I’m—I’m not.”

“I’m on my way. You just let me know where you are.”

She gives him directions, and he stays on the phone with her, chatting about his day, and how Emma is so much more cheerful now that she’s getting regularly laid, and how Mason is on one of his semi-regular ‘get maudlin and drink expensive whisky and lament about his life choices using Shakespeare’ benders, and how the apartment looks awesome and he’s so glad Jiya surprised him with that, and so on.

It’s so very normal, and he never asks her anything other than if she’s still breathing nice and deep and slow, and she has never better appreciated Rufus’s ability to just talk and talk and talk someone’s ear off.

He walks over in a shirt that says something about protons—some joke that she literally can’t decipher right now, with her brain muddled as it is—and jeans, looking like he always does.

Lucy can feel the band around her chest loosening. Rufus is just so—so normal, so very _himself_ , and it’s such a relief she feels dizzy. “Rufus.”

“Heya.” He comes and sits down next to her on the bench she’s found, her tiny little boat in the storm. “You want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know.” What can she even say about it? Is it worth it to say anything? “I keep thinking that I’m fine. I’m doing so much better, I really am. But then something happens and… and it feels like I’m at square one again.”

Rufus looks at her for a moment, then grabs her messenger bag. “May I?”

Lucy nods.

He goes into her bag, pulling out one of her notebooks and ripping a page out, then grabbing a pen. With smooth, practiced motions, he draws a large spiral. It starts at one end of the page and ends at the other, left to right.

“Okay, so, when I was at MIT I had a breakdown. I was a complete and total mess. I felt like a fraud, like an imposter who’d just gotten lucky. I had… I had such huge loans, and Connor said he’d take care of them for me but what if I flunked out? What if I let him down? I was away from Kevin, my mom, what if they needed me—it was real bad.

“So I called Connor. And that crazy son of a bitch flies all the way from Japan to get to me. Talked me through it. I—I’d always had affection for Connor but when he came out like that I realized how he’d become family to me. How he actually really was a decent guy. I’d been waiting for the punchline this whole time, but he… he really came through. And this is what he showed me.”

Rufus holds up the image of the spiral. “Sometimes you feel like you’re taking a step back, because you’re feeling the same way that you did a year ago, or a month ago, or whatever. But you’re not actually moving back.” His finger traces the spiral. “But you’re still moving forward. You’re never back at square one. The spiral is always moving forward. Even though it loops.”

Lucy stares at his finger as it slides over the spiral and begins to feel herself actually calm down. “I—I never thought of it. Like that.”

Rufus grins at her. “Well, now you have.” He hands her the piece of paper. “And you can just look at that whenever you’re feeling stuck.”

Lucy tucks the paper into her pocket. “Can we… can we just walk, for a bit?”

Rufus stands up and offers her his arm, making her laugh. She stands up and takes it, hitching her messenger bag over her other shoulder. “Feels like ages since we talked, I know.”

“There’s a good coffee place nearby.”

“Why, are you buying?”

She laughs. “All right, sure. But just this once.”

The world has air again. She’s walking with one of her best friends, the guy who never fails to make her laugh and put things into perspective. It’s warm, still, the winter winds not yet kicking in (although God knows it never gets properly cold in California), the sun is shining, and she’s going to come home to her boys—even if they aren’t _her_ boys. It’s… it’s good.

She’s alive. She’s loved. It’s enough.

 

* * *

 

Flynn stands in the middle of the apartment living room for a solid ten minutes at least, feeling frozen, like a block of ice has slid up over his body and imprisoned him while he wasn’t looking.

He… he could have said that better. But that—how did that all explode so quickly? How did that go from a suggestion to a full-blown explosion in… what, two fucking seconds? It’s like he was driving and hit a tree so he was trying to hit reverse and then Wyatt just blew the whole damn car up.

Fuck, he should’ve seen this coming. He finally moves, like he has to re-learn how, like he has to figure out all over again what his limbs are and how they work, and he passes his hand over his eyes.

He knew this entire time that Wyatt’s got issues with his sexuality. Just because he’s making out with Flynn and letting Flynn fuck him—just because he’s even enjoying it—doesn’t mean that he’s actually comfortable with it being out in the open, with giving it a name. Flynn knows the drill. He saw it plenty during war. Men would be together but only in the shadows, make excuses the entire time, never say how they felt. When the fight was over, they went their separate ways and never talked about it—went home to their wives and girlfriends and families. Their old lives.

He’s never subscribed to that personally. He and Matej were private, out of necessity. They were kids, they were scared, they only told Stiv. But then he got older and he came to realize that he’s not going to let shame or fear dictate his actions. He’s going to be with whatever damn person he wants to be with and fuck anyone who tries to tell him otherwise.

But he’s different that way. He knows he is. That’s Maria in him, that’s his mother, doing what she pleased and being who she pleased and fuck the consequences or what society thought. It’s the core of him, it’s why he took a time machine and went after his family, it’s why he chose to stay and help Lucy instead of running, and he’s not going to back down now with Wyatt—but relationships are a two-way street. And if Wyatt doesn’t want to play, then it’s there’s no ball game.

He sits down heavily on the couch. Fuck. He really should’ve known. Wyatt’s spent his whole life terrified of himself, of his father, of society, operating out of fear. Thirty-odd years of that, it’s a hard habit to break. And now that Wyatt’s breaking down every other part of himself, there had to be something that he was still holding onto. Clearly it was his goddamn sexuality.

The question now is—does he give up? Does he just let Wyatt run and torch everything they’ve had, everything they could have? Wyatt made it clear, he doesn’t want the rest of the world to know about this, that whatever affection he has for Flynn isn’t enough for him to be brave about this.

But he also said that Flynn only wanted Lucy. That Flynn was only picking Wyatt because Lucy didn’t want him.

So maybe—maybe he has a chance. Maybe if he just makes it clear that he does want Wyatt, that he does choose Wyatt, then Wyatt will have the courage to come out?

Christ, he’s not asking for Wyatt to paint himself in blue, pink, and purple and lead the damn Pride parade every June. He just wants to share a damn bed with him, wake up with him, stop hiding. Cuddle him for fuck’s sake.

The phone rings, and Flynn jumps a mile.

It’s his cell. He snatches it up, not even looking at the caller I.D. before hitting _talk_. “Hello?”

“Flynn?” It’s not Wyatt. He hadn’t even realized he’d hoped it was Wyatt until now, hearing someone else’s voice, and feeling his heart fall down into his stomach.

It was probably too much for him to hope that Wyatt would reach out. And yet.

“Christopher,” he replies. “What’s the matter?”

He respects Denise Christopher but they are far from friends. She isn’t calling him just to chat.

“I wanted to talk to you and see how Lucy is. She wasn’t answering my cell.”

“She should be home any second from class.” Come to think of it, it is rather late. Lucy should be back by now. He hopes she’s okay—again that old fear starts up, that Rittenhouse or someone has taken her, that she’s been in an accident—but Lucy’s also an adult who can do her own things and be her own person. She’s ready to be independent, her open mic nights have proven that, her friendships with Emma, Jiya, and Jess have proven that. He’s not going to panic.

Or at least, he’s going to try not to.

“Is she doing all right?” Denise asks.

“Ah, yeah, she’s doing fine.” Lucy’s doing better than all of them, it seems. Or at least the best out of the three of them, the misfits in this new timeline.

Something of his bitterness and his upset must shine through because there’s a pause at the other end of the line, and then Denise says, carefully like she’s aware this isn’t exactly their normal territory, “And how are you doing?”

Normally, Flynn would tell her to shove it. It’s none of her business and again, they aren’t friends.

But Denise is also a foreigner on this soil. She’s been living as a woman of color, and with a woman for her life partner for the last two decades on top of that. She’s clawed her way up the command chain in Homeland just as Flynn once clawed his way up to being treated with respect instead of suspicion by the NSA. Perhaps, if anyone knows what he’s feeling right now, it’s her.

“Wyatt and I had a bit of a fight.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. I’m shocked it’s not more common.”

“Yeah, well, ever since I found out kissing him shut him up the arguments have died down.”

Flynn can’t see Denise’s face but her silence speaks volumes. Hilarious volumes. He wishes he could actually see what she looks like right now. “You and Wyatt.”

“Well, not anymore.” He rubs at his forehead. “You—you ever get used to the fact that you have to be the brave one? That there’s never a choice for you?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean… your skin color. My accent. Our names. My father actually changed his. Our family name is Marković. He got it legally changed when he started working as an international agent. Found that it smoothed things over on assignments. People… looked at Asher Flynn differently than they’d looked at Asher Marković. And I don’t blame him for it. But I can’t change how I look, or what I sound like, even though I’ve tried. I’d spend… hours in the bathroom, practicing, looking the mirror to just… make sure I moved my mouth the right way because you move it differently for English instead of Croatian.

“And I think that maybe—that’s made us braver in some ways because we had no choice but to be ourselves and so why not be ourselves in other ways? And then someone… someone like Wyatt who’s white and American and he hasn’t ever had to—being brave like that is new to him.”

“Maybe you decided to get like that,” Denise replies. “But you’re talking to the woman who only came out to her mother last month, so.” She sounds tired. “I changed my name, too. Couldn’t change my skin or my family. But I didn’t talk about my religion. I didn’t talk about being a lesbian. I was already getting so much flak, I didn’t want more. We all handle it differently. You got even more defiant. I hid what I could.

“But I think… it has merit. You get used to it, after a while. Fighting. It wears you down but you get used to it. And if you’re not used to it, yes, I can… I can see why others have to get used to the idea.”

“I know we’re all fighting our own battles.” It’s not that he doesn’t know that. It’s not that he’s saying everyone doesn’t have their shit. “I just… I get so frustrated because I never had a choice in taking a stand and fighting for myself and when people run from it, and run from—he’s running from a chance to be—we’re goddamn happy, I know I can make him happy, and he’s running from it and I don’t—I don’t understand. There’s so little else he has to fight for, there’s so much else he’s been given, why can’t he just fucking be who he wants to be and… stop hiding in all this toxic bullshit.”

“Maybe if you show him how, he’ll follow you.” Denise sighs. “I can’t say that Michelle always had it easy with me. I was scared. I wanted to hide what we were. She’s been telling me for years that I should tell my mom the truth. She had no idea she even had grandkids. But every step I’ve taken, it’s because people that loved me showed me the way. They were patient with me. Even when I probably didn’t deserve it.

“You just had one fight about this, right? Are you telling me that one argument is enough to get Garcia Flynn to give up on something? Because I might not know your favorite color or your favorite food but I do know that you are the most annoyingly tenacious man that I’ve ever met.”

A weak, watery chuckle escapes him. This is high praise, coming from Denise Christopher. Probably the only praise he’ll ever get from her, and the only acknowledgment that he ever had her and her team up against the ropes.

“I say that you go get him. Wyatt’s a smartass but he wants direction, he wants leadership. He’d sass me all day long but when he’d worn himself down from his tizzy he would do what I said. He’d do what Lucy said.”

That makes sense. Wyatt’s first brushes with authority were his mother and his father. His mother ran away and abandoned him and his father scared the shit out of him and abused him. Of course he’s not just going to trust that whoever’s in charge really is, in fact, in charge and will look after him. Of course he’s going to need some kind of guarantee.

Fuck. Flynn should’ve been gentler with him. He did this with Lucy, too, when he saw her at the Hindenburg. He just expects everyone to be on his level, to work at his speed, and they don’t. He has to remember to slow down and let them catch up.

“Show him that this isn’t the end. Don’t give up on this just yet, not if you really want it. You say you’re used to being brave and fighting, well, prove it. This is it. You're asking him to make a leap of faith and you can't demand that of someone without at least making an effort to prove to them that you're going to catch them. Especially with something like this. So show him that you're not going to put up with his kicking and screaming but that you'll also be there for him at the end of the day. That you're not going to abuse him but you're not going to leave him, either.”

“Everything’s a challenge with you,” he notes.

“You wouldn’t like me any other way,” Denise quips.

“Go be with your kids and stop bothering me, Christopher.”

“Only too happy to, Flynn. Tell Lucy to call me.”

She hangs up.

Flynn stares down at the phone, running his thumb over the screen. Wyatt isn’t back yet, but then, Flynn doesn’t exactly expect him to be back. Wyatt’s hurt, and scared, and feeling exposed. So he’s running.

Well, luckily Flynn’s faster. He just has to figure out where Wyatt will hole up.

He’s not giving up on this just yet. On them.


	12. Chapter 12

Flynn tries calling Wyatt’s cell, but of course Wyatt doesn’t answer. Flynn is far from surprised. He wouldn’t answer the phone if their positions were reversed—he’d need some time to cool off first—but then again, he wouldn’t have just run away in the first place.

He takes a few deep breaths. Tries to calm down. Tries to be patient. This isn’t really something he wants to fight over. He wants so badly to be understanding, and he tries like hell to remember when he was a young teen, when he first realized he loved Matej in a different way than friendship, and remembers how scared he was. Scared of judgment, of losing Matej’s friendship, of losing everyone.

Sure, his crisis came when he was thirteen instead of when he was in his mid-thirties, but he can remember. He can do this. He can be patient for Wyatt.

Or at the very least, he can try.

If Wyatt isn’t picking up his phone and still hasn’t come home, there’s only one place he could be. His old apartment isn’t usable, they turned in the keys that afternoon, and he wouldn’t want to go there anyway. No, when Wyatt’s scared like this he’s going to retreat into ingrained habits, he’s going to go into flight or fight mode and that means he’ll be at the one place where he instinctively feels safe and comfortable.

Flynn drives over without calling, only texting once he parks on the street. That takes him longer than he’d like, because this is San Francisco and parking is an absolute bitch in this city.

 _I’m out front_ , he says. _I just want to talk._

The response comes two minutes later. _How am I not surprised you know he’s here._

Jess meets him on the curb, looking tired but only slightly frustrated, which is probably better than Wyatt deserves for showing up at her apartment without warning. “I hope he didn’t interrupt anything.”

“Nah. I mean, I was hoping to go over and see Emma tonight but… he’s a wreck.” Jess shrugs. “I might not be in love with him anymore but I still care about him. He’s been doing really well lately.”

“Did he tell you…”

“Broke down like a baby.” Jess sounds amused and exhausted at the same time. “He knows he messed up, if it’s any consolation.”

“Yeah, well, I messed up too. I didn’t exactly give him a safe place to land. If that makes sense.”

“It does.” Jess folds her arms. “Well, if you want, I can wait here while you talk to him. I figure you won’t really want anyone else there.”

“You can wait in my car, if you want.” He hands her the keys.

“Thanks. Just don’t have make-up sex on my furniture, okay?” She pauses. “Or my walls, or my floor, or—just don’t have sex in my apartment.”

Flynn highly doubts that sex of any kind is in his near future after this fiasco. “Sure thing.”

Jess tosses him the key to her apartment, and Flynn heads on up.

Wyatt does in fact look miserable. Jess’s apartment is done up in dark, strong tones, reminding him a little like a classic cocktail bar, or perhaps a library at a gentlemen’s club from the Victorian era. Although there isn’t anything stuffy about it. It strikes him as welcoming, and homey. Wyatt looks horribly out of place in it as he lies on the couch, his face pink like he cried and then scrubbed it raw, his eyes still puffy, his hair sticking up every which-way, his clothes rumpled and his stubble worse than usual.

How the poor guy managed to make himself look like the picture of absolute despair in just a few short hours, Flynn has no clue. It must take a kind of special talent.

“Is the pizza guy…” Wyatt says, sitting up, only to freeze and stare as he realizes it’s Flynn.

“No pizza, no,” Flynn spreads his arms wide, showing how empty they are. “Hopefully you’ll forgive me for that. And for… everything else.”

Wyatt makes an odd croaking noise. “What—what are you doing here?”

“What do you think?” Flynn dares to take a few steps further into the room, so that he’s standing in front of Wyatt but still far enough away that Wyatt won’t feel trapped or like Flynn’s looming over him. It’s something Flynn’s developed over the years, a habit he had to cultivate since he’s almost always the tallest person in the room. “I’m here to apologize.”

“You’re apologizing?”

“Shocking, I know. I hope you can suspend your disbelief for a few moments.” Flynn offers up a small, crooked smile.

“It’s just… I mean, I feel like I’m the one who really screwed up here, man.” Wyatt’s voice grows thick. He’s looking Flynn in the eye, but he’s shaking a bit, like he’s terrified of doing this and is making himself go through with it anyway. “I know I’m shit about this whole thing. I mean I’m shit at relationships in general. Only ever been in one and I was a toxic idiot the whole time, codependent and all that… but I—I want to try. I want to try and be better. I’m not ashamed of you, it’s not you, it’s me and my stupid issues and screwing it all up in my head.”

Flynn moves carefully, slowly, purposefully telegraphing what he intends to do so that Wyatt has time to move or tell him to stop if he wants. Wyatt just watches, though, and so Flynn seats himself next to Wyatt on the couch, sitting diagonally so that he’s still facing him.

“I… sometimes forget that not everyone is on the same page that I am,” he says, slowly. Sorting his words out ahead of time so that he doesn’t fuck it up again. “I move quickly. And I often expect people to move just as quickly, and to be on the same page, and they’re not, and it… it’s not fair to them. To you. You’re dealing with a lot and I… I didn’t make it easy on you by not talking about this. We should’ve talked about it. Just fooling around like that—it wasn’t fair to you.”

Wyatt shakes his head and gives a watery laugh. “Man, I’m not mad about that. I should’ve said something sooner, I should’ve talked to you about how I was feeling. This is my issue, not yours, it was my job to say something. I can’t—you can’t read my mind. I shouldn’t assume that you can.”

“But you’re still my—” Flynn nearly says _partner_ and ends up biting his tongue almost in half to stop it from coming out. “—someone I care about. I should’ve checked in with you.”

“Someone you care about.” Wyatt’s tone, for the first time, slides from apologetic and cracking to something hard and sardonic. He looks away, down at the ground between his knees.

Flynn knows he’s just stepped on a landmine but he can’t resist taking his foot off anyway. If it blows, it blows. “You are someone I care about, Wyatt.” _You’re someone I’m in love with._

Wyatt shakes his head. “You got a funny way of talking about it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You… you made it sound like I was who you deserved,” Wyatt manages. His throat is raw. “Not who you actually wanted. Like… like I was who you’re settling for.”

Flynn feels like someone’s punched him in the gut. “No, Wyatt, I… no. I just meant—I meant that we understand each other. That we’ve got through similar shit. I—fuck, you idiot.”

Common sense tells him to keep his distance, still, but fuck common sense. He grabs Wyatt’s hand, squeezing tightly. Wyatt makes a wounded noise and looks up at Flynn again, his eyes shining and wet.

“Wyatt. I don’t do casual. I don’t do… anything. I thought that meant you understood, but I wasn’t clear, really, and I’m sorry. You can’t read my mind and I shouldn’t have expected you too. So here’s me saying what I meant—what I was scared to say exactly because I was… I knew you were working through shit and I was scared of being rejected and I didn’t want you to run.”

Wyatt’s eyes are so very blue and pale, his lips chapped and parted, his face still flushed. He looks unbearably human and fragile, and like the prettiest thing Flynn’s ever seen. He squeezes Wyatt’s hand one more time, to make sure Wyatt’s here, grounded, in the moment.

“I love you.”

“You can’t mean that.” Wyatt’s voice breaks. “Garcia, you—you deserve—”

“I don’t deserve better. Hey, no, I’m not playing that game.” He tugs on Wyatt’s hand. “You earned a second chance. So did I. I don’t care how long it takes, Wyatt, until you stop hating yourself but I’m here for you until then, and after then, as long as you want me.” He pauses, realizing he’s made an assumption again. “Do you want me?”

Wyatt finally lets a few tears slip free, looking like he hates himself the whole time for crying. “Yeah, of course I want you, you fucking idiot, I’m so goddamn in love with you it hurts, God fucking dammit.”

“That much, huh?”

“Shut up.” Wyatt gives him a wobbly, watery smile. Flynn’s heart feels like it’s seizing up. He’s calling him _Garcia_ , he’s looking him in the eye, it’s everything he hadn’t even realized he’d stopped hoping for until he’d thought it was too late to have any of it, even a scrap of it.

“I’m here,” Flynn promises. He rubs his thumb back and forth along Wyatt’s knuckles. “I’m here, Wyatt. Go as slow as you want, tell as many or as few people as you want, do whatever you want with the rest of the world just… give me a chance to make you happy. Because you make me happy, all right?”

He hadn’t believed the journal when it had said that he had been in love with Wyatt, and Wyatt with him. He hadn’t understood. Lucy he had understood, God yes, but maybe that was because he saw her in all her luminous glory in São Paulo. If he had seen Wyatt there, a Wyatt who had his shit together and who clearly loved him, would he have realized that part sooner as well?

Maybe it doesn’t matter, in the end. They’re here. And he does love him, wants to protect him. Wants to support him.

Wyatt wipes at his eyes. Finally, finally, he starts to grip Flynn’s hand in return, shaking a little, like he’s standing at the edge of a cliff and scared that he’ll fall. “You snuck up on me, man,” he admits, and his voice would qualify as a whisper if it wasn’t so damn hoarse. “I think I wanted you from the first second I—but it was easier to hate you, so I did, and I didn’t think about—didn’t let myself think about it any other way. And then I was in the deep end before I knew it and you’re everything I didn’t ever let myself want and I’m still working on it but I am, I swear, I’m working on it, I want to work on it, because I—I—”

“You don’t have to say it,” Flynn promises. He reaches up, cups Wyatt’s cheek, wipes the tears away. “You don’t ever have to say it.”

“I want to.” Wyatt sounds agonized, like he’s on the rack, being stretched open, cut open. “I want to, I want to stop feeling dirty, I want to stop feeling wrong, I know it’s not wrong I _know_ it’s not and I want it to feel right because you feel right, to me, you feel _right_.”

“Hey, hey.” Flynn strokes through Wyatt’s hair, caresses his cheek, keeps Wyatt’s eyes on him. “Look at me. That’s how I know. Okay? That’s how you say it. It doesn’t have to be those three particular words if you aren’t ready for them yet. There’s more to it than just those words. It’s more to it than words of any kind. But when you say things like that, I know what you mean. I feel it. Don’t torture yourself if you’re not ready. I’ll be here, still. I’m still here. I’ve got you and I’m not leaving.”

Wyatt looks like he’s breaking open and falling to pieces, and so before he can second guess it, Flynn yanks him in and holds him as tightly as he can. Wyatt gives a dry sob and clings to him, burying his face in Flynn’s neck. “Garcia,” he whispers, and that’s all he says as his nails dig into Flynn’s shoulder and back, but it’s all Flynn needs.

“I’m here,” he repeats. “I’m here and I’ve got you. I’m not leaving. I’ve got you and I’m not leaving.”

Wyatt presses himself so close that Flynn can hear Wyatt’s heart thumping against Flynn’s chest and vice versa, the two of them in counterpoint to one another, almost but not quite one being.

He’s got no idea how long they stay there. Only that eventually Jess comes back in, moving silently, and Flynn realizes that his legs have fallen asleep from Wyatt being draped over them. Wyatt makes a noise of fearful protest when Flynn shifts, and Jess chuckles.

“We need to go home,” Flynn notes.

“Home,” Wyatt echoes, and Flynn nods.

“It’s still your home,” he promises, answering Wyatt’s unspoken question. “We’re going to have to cuddle up in the bed, though, it’s only a queen size.”

“ _Only_ a queen.” Wyatt snorts and rolls his eyes. “You long-limbed fuck.”

“I don’t recall you complaining before about the length of my limbs…”

“Oh my God, I hate you.”

Flynn knows what he really means. “C’mon. Let’s get out of Jess’s hair.”

Wyatt hugs Jess goodbye, the two of them clinging for a second, and Flynn’s heart aches in a soft, fond way. He’s glad that in spite of everything, Wyatt and Jess are friends again.

They head down to the car, and as they walk, their hands brush. Wyatt doesn’t do anything about it, so neither does Flynn—but then once they’re in the car, Wyatt reaches over and grabs Flynn’s hand, squeezing, interlocking their fingers.

Flynn smiles down at the steering wheel and squeezes back.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt finds himself inordinately scared as they approach the apartment. Lucy’s not going to judge them, but he is in love with her, and so is Flynn, and it’s certainly not her fault that’s how things are, but it just feels like a big mess waiting to happen.

Lucy looks understandably worried as they both enter. “I just got off the phone with Denise and she said that you two were having a… a day, what—where have you been, are you all right?”

Wyatt doesn’t have to look in the mirror to know that he looks like absolute shit. He can’t even begin to answer Lucy’s questions, but he wants to ease her worries, but he’s not even sure how to begin to explain.

Flynn, luckily, takes charge. “Wyatt and I… had been sort of… well, we’re…”

Of course this is the one goddamn moment where Flynn’s words are failing him.

As if realizing this, Flynn takes Wyatt’s hand, holding it tightly. Lucy’s gaze darts down to their hands, then back up to Flynn’s face, and Wyatt realizes with a lurch in his chest that she knows. She’s known for a while.

“I suppose there’s no reason to get another bed then, is there?” Lucy asks, her voice soft. She musters up a smile, and Wyatt can’t read the look in her eyes but he knows that she’s not happy, he knows what Lucy looks like when she’s happy and this isn’t it, but she’s not angry at them either and she’s not judging them so what is going on…

“I was hoping you two would tell me soon,” Lucy goes on. “I mean… it’s not my business but I was worried about you two.”

“Were we really that obvious?” Flynn asks, and he sounds panicked, which makes Wyatt want to laugh. He wrestles the urge back down. It wouldn’t be fair of him to laugh when Flynn’s being confronted about the man he loves by the woman he loves.

The man he _loves_.

Flynn loves him.

Holy shit.

Lucy shakes her head as if to silently declare them both to be impossible. “I’m glad you two have worked things out. I’m going to bed, okay? I’ll see you guys in the morning.”

That is… unusual. Wyatt glances at the clock. It’s not that late.

But he is tired after the fucking day he’s had, so he doesn’t protest, and they let Lucy slip off to bed.

“What do you want to do?” Flynn asks, looking at him.

Their hands are still intertwined. Wyatt never wants to let go. “Can you just… hold me?”

They’ve never done that before. They blow each other or do a handjob or something, and then Wyatt puts as much distance between them as possible. Afterglow? Yeah, right. That was something he could never let himself do.

But now—now he can. Now he can just let Flynn hold him, and cuddle him, and they can be as stupid and romantic and mushy as they want. It’s okay.

“Sure thing, princess,” Flynn says, and Wyatt rolls his eyes.

“I knew that letting you and Rufus have a _Star Wars_ marathon was a joke.”

Flynn just grins at him and drags him into the bedroom and oh, _oh_. It’s Flynn’s room, and it’s Wyatt’s now too, and there’s little touches of Flynn everywhere, like a printed-out picture that Asher sent him of the view from his house, and Flynn’s watch on the dresser, and a copy of Van Gogh’s _Starry Night_ over the bed, and Jesus Christ, Wyatt’s so in love with this guy it’s stupid.

They don’t fuck that night. They just sleep, and Wyatt had no idea how shitty he was sleeping until he finally wasn’t, until he had a nice and proper rest with his head on Flynn’s chest and Flynn’s arm flung around him, and he gets to do this all the time, he gets to do this every night, maybe even for the rest of his life if he’s good and he doesn’t completely fuck it up.

They do fuck the next night, or rather the next morning after Lucy’s left for class and Flynn calls in and lies that they’re stuck in traffic, and then he fucks Wyatt nice and slow in their bed, _their_ bed, the bed that belongs to them, and Wyatt clutches at him, and whines and swears and begs Flynn to go faster. He figures out pretty damn quickly that saying _Garcia_ in just the right begging tone of voice will get Flynn to do just about anything Wyatt wants, at least when they’re having sex, anyway, and he uses it to ruthless advantage while simultaneously trying not to let it get to his head.

And God, it’s good, it’s so good, as the day turns into a week and then that turns into another week. Work is pretty much the same, except that Flynn while smirk at him and wink slyly when no one else is looking. And they go to work in the same car, and hold hands while Flynn is driving one handed—never anywhere else, because Wyatt’s not ready for that, but that’s okay. And Flynn is patient with him, so very patient. Flynn lets Wyatt be as private or as public as he wants. He lets Wyatt reach out first, except when they're alone in the apartment and then Flynn can't keep his hands off Wyatt, curling up with him on the couch, brushing up against him as they move around, coming up from behind and wrapping his arms around Wyatt, using his height to his advantage. He makes stupid jokes and keeps Wyatt up late at night talking quietly about everything and nothing. He quotes poetry at Wyatt like it's nothing. He even talks in German when he wants to say something private and doesn't want anyone to overhear. He tells Wyatt how pretty he looks, tells Wyatt he's proud of him, tells Wyatt he loves him.

Wyatt fucking adores it. Soaks it up like a touch-starved puppy. It feels like he's back in the early days with Jess when his best friend finally turned into his lover and he could just orbit her light, her warmth, only it's better because Jess was the lighthouse in a storm and he ruined them both and dragged them down onto the rocks but Flynn, Flynn is coming home after the skies and seas have cleared, after he's calmed the waters, and goddamn, Wyatt never knew it could be like this. Every time he looks at Flynn it’s like his heart fucking skips a beat and leaps right out of his goddamn chest, and it’s perfect. Or it would be.

There’s just one thing.

Lucy.

It’s good, of course. Lucy is their friend and she’s happy for them. They have breakfast together, and dinner, and they help her with her homework, quizzing her, proofreading her papers. It’s all good.

It’s just.

Well, he and Flynn are in love with her, that’s all.

He can see it in every single piece of Flynn, and he can feel it in every single piece of himself, and the one comfort is that they’re empty in the same way, yearning in the same way. Even though they never really talk about it, he knows, and Flynn knows, and they can sort of contain their longing and their sadness by echoing it back at each other, keeping it from going nuclear.

But God, they really do both love her so much, and there’s only so long she can dance just out of their reach before something snaps.

Something has to give.


	13. Chapter 13

Lucy’s pretty sure the last two weeks have been some kind of personally designed punishment sent to her from the universe as repayment for… something. Maybe all the sins of her family?

Doesn’t matter. What matters is that Flynn and Wyatt are together, they’re dating, they’re stupidly in love, and she’s happy for them—truly she is, they deserve to be happy, it’s just that, well—

It’s just that she wants them so badly that she might actually commit a murder just to get rid of some of the painful tension she feels ripping her apart inside.

She feels like a bad friend, like a bad person, because she can’t stand to be around them for long. And it’s not like they’re being disgustingly cuddly or anything. In fact they act the way they normally do, just with more casual touching. Wyatt no longer makes an effort to keep away from Flynn, to put distance between them, and in fact it’s only now that he’s no longer doing it that Lucy realizes how bad it was before. She knew that Wyatt had been repressing himself and struggling, she hadn’t needed Wyatt’s tearful admission to her the next day after he and Flynn announced their relationship to tell her that. But to see it in action, or rather to see the reverse in action, really drove it home.

So yes, she feels like shit because she wants to support them, especially Wyatt, but dear God it hurts, it _hurts_ , and she’s been through enough already and she knows that things are getting better and she’s rebuilding her life but she wants to rebuild it with them and can’t she have this one thing? This one damn thing?

She spends two weeks in annoyed agony, upset and hating herself for being upset, trying to be happy for them, and wondering what the fuck she’s supposed to do now. She can’t very well just move out. The boys don’t seem to want her to, and even if they do want to retreat into their coupledom at some point, her leaving right after Wyatt moved in would be a little too obvious. It would show her belly, so to speak, reveal what she’s trying so hard to hide, and she can’t have that.

Around the end of the second week, though, she starts to… notice something.

It’s not that Lucy is blind and suddenly she can see things she didn’t before. It’s not coming out of darkness and into light. It’s more like she’s seeing something from the other side of it. A new angle. A different perspective.

The dark side of the moon.

For instance—after two weeks and three days (not that she’s counting or anything, or rather not like she’s trying to count, it’s not something she’s planning, in fact it’s something she’s trying actively not to do)—she walks into the living room on Sunday morning to find that Flynn is absently massaging Wyatt’s feet as they sprawl on the couch.

Flynn massages her feet.

The next day, she blearily accepts coffee from Flynn made just the way she likes it—two sugars, touch of milk—and it’s only once she’s in the car on the way to class that she realizes Flynn made Wyatt coffee as well, just the way that Wyatt likes it: one sugar and a generous splash of hazelnut creamer.

Huh.

Now that she’s started noticing it, of course, it just becomes more and more obvious, everything coming into sharp focus like adjusting a camera lens, so fast that she actually feels a bit loopy about it.

Flynn treats her the same way that he treats Wyatt. He treats Wyatt the same way he treats her.

And Lucy—Lucy feels like the world’s biggest idiot.

Because of course. Of _course_. How did she not see it before?

Wyatt is a mess and a half. A darling mess and a half, an absolute puppy, but still, a mess. And he and Flynn have… well she and Flynn have a bond, they’ve had it since before she even met him in her timeline. It’s something that took root before she was ready, something that nearly withered and died before she could tend to it properly. And she and Wyatt have their own thing, they have the connection of two people who need something soft and safe and reliable when everything else in life is going off the goddamn rails.

So Flynn and Wyatt have a bond: the bond of soldiers, the bond of men turning away from a former love and embracing another, the bond of two people who hate themselves. And Lucy has faced many a dark moment over the last few months. She’s felt alone, displaced, angry, dying, she’s been in every shade of grief there is, but she’s never hated herself. Not like Wyatt and Flynn have. She’s never wanted to stop existing.

No wonder Flynn and Wyatt look at each other and think, _oh, I can have that one_. She’s spent this whole time knowing Wyatt put her up on a pedestal the way he did with Jess but of course, Flynn has done the same. She saved him, or at least the other version of herself did, and he’s been feeling like shit this whole time—

When she talks to Jess about it over the phone, because Jess is now across the country on assignment for a new story, there is a muffled screaming noise for a solid minute before Jess comes back on the line.

“Were you screaming into a pillow?”

“Yes. And what of it?” Jess now sounds like she’s clanking around the kitchen. If Lucy were to guess, she’d say that Jess is getting herself a drink. Probably an alcoholic one. “Look, I wish I could say I was surprised. But you gotta cut this shit off at the knees. Head it off at the pass. If they want you and this is some bizarre self-denial ritual then you don’t want any part of that.”

“I could be wrong.”

Jess’s snort speaks volumes on her opinion about that. “Lucy, I swear, if you ask literally anyone who knows you three, they’ll say the same thing I’m about to: those two would walk on broken glass for the rest of their lives like poor Ariel if it meant you were happy.”

“Ariel walks on—I think I missed that part of the Disney film.”

“It’s the original story. Which, by the way, was written by a gay man. It’s a big ol’ gay symbolism tale.”

“Why am I not surprised you know this.”

“If I were you, I would just confront them on it.”

That’s… possibly easier said than done. Wyatt doesn’t always do well with confrontation. In fact he fucking sucks at it. There’s a saying, _never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from any direction._

No prizes for guessing which one Wyatt is.

Flynn, on the other hand, is good with confrontation in the sense that he keeps his temper. But he’s more stubborn than a mule and if Lucy couldn’t change his mind about his methods in going up against Rittenhouse she’s not all that confident about her ability to change his mind about dating her.

So she does the only sensible thing to do, which is of course to go to every single one of their friends and ask for advice, because apparently she’s back in middle school again and crowdsourcing advice is how to prepare for big relationship steps.

Jiya and Rufus laugh and Lucy almost kills them. Almost.

Emma says that Lucy needs to just give up on those two idiots and find better people to date.

Denise tells her to do what Michelle did. “I was really scared about dating her,” she admits when Lucy comes over for tea and a chat. “She knew that I liked her, and I knew that she liked me. We’d been dancing around it for weeks. But every time there was an opportunity to officially… turn it into something more, I’d shy away.”

Lucy can’t really imagine Denise Christopher being afraid of anything, for any reason. She’s a rock, a pillar of solid steel. But she was young, once, and the steel was hot then, molten, not yet fully formed.

“Michelle ordered some pizza for a night in, and went to Blockbusters and put on a movie, one we’d seen a few times before. While we were eating she told me that she understood why I was scared, but she also thought that I would regret it if we didn’t at least try, and that if we never tried—the unanswered question would be a bigger regret than trying and failing.

“I felt safe in the environment she’d created, and she was very patient, listing the reasons why we should, and telling me that if I didn’t want to that was okay, but she’d be taking some space from our friendship so she could have time. Because the in-between thing we’d been doing hadn’t been good. We needed to commit and make it work, or step back.”

“You chose to commit.”

Denise nods. “It was, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to note, the best decision I ever made.”

“What if they don’t choose the same as you did, though?”

Denise levels a look at her that is made of stone. Warm stone, sunbaked stone, the kind of stone you use as a seat during a picnic, but still—stone. “Then you have to accept their choice and know that they don’t deserve you anyway, as painful as it might be. You can love someone all you want but love alone can’t save them. They have to choose to be saved. You both have to be willing to put in the work. And if they don’t want to do that—then you deserve to find someone who won’t let their personal issues stop them from being with you and being the best partner they can be for you—and trusting that it will work out.”

It hurts to hear it, but she knows it’s necessary. She is the kind of person who will throw herself on the rocks until the end of time for those she loves, even if those same people are the ones letting her drown.

She also can’t imagine her life without her boys. That’s all.

 

* * *

 

Flynn is… surprised, to say the least, when he comes home with Wyatt to find that Lucy has made dinner.

Lucy is not. Well. To say that she’s a bad cook makes it sound like she doesn’t care, and Lucy does care very much. But. She also once tried to make a sandwich and Flynn wanted to call the humane center on her. That poor, poor BLT.

“Did you order this in?” Wyatt asks, because Wyatt is tactless. It’s adorable, sometimes, in a stumbling puppy kind of way, but it’s very much not the thing to say when Lucy is standing there with wine already poured and food spread out on the coffee table so they can have a casual, cozy night in.

“It looks great,” Flynn says, kicking Wyatt in the shin. “Thanks, Lucy.”

“I thought we could just relax for a bit and chat,” Lucy says. She sounds oddly… fragile, there’s something insubstantial about her tonight, like he can almost, but not quite, see through her.

“Of course.” That’s what they usually do. They go to Rufus and Jiya’s for movie nights, and to play board games, and they go out to do things on weekends and all, local hikes and things, but usually Lucy’s got homework and he and Wyatt have work in the morning so they just stay at home.

It’s terribly domestic. The only thing missing is Lucy in their bed, and the more Flynn tries not to think about it the louder it becomes.

He ignores that thought, just as he ignores all the other thoughts that scream at him. He’s good at it. You don’t last long as a soldier if you don’t figure out a way to tune out screams. Instead, he sits down on the couch, and Wyatt—as a silent apology for his comment—helps Lucy bring over the food.

“I made it from packets and stuff,” she admits as she sits down. “But I did some of it?”

“Good enough,” Flynn assures her, noting that she has managed to burn the meat a little but proud of her anyway.

Lucy picks at her food for about ten minutes as Wyatt wolfs his down and Flynn pretends he isn’t noticing that something’s up with Lucy. He wants to ask what’s wrong, but he knows that Lucy will tell him in her own time. She’s direct, although self-sacrificing, and in the wake of her loss of existence she’s had to learn how to ask for things. Flynn trusts she’ll say what’s on her mind.

At last she carefully pushes her food away. She’s staring at her untouched wine glass, not looking either of them in the eye or even in their general vicinity. “I was thinking that I could maybe ask you a couple questions?”

Wyatt pauses, food still in his mouth, his eyes going wide like he’s just realized he’s been tricked into an interrogation. God bless his stupid earnest heart.

“Sure thing,” Flynn replies. He slides his hand over Wyatt’s knee, squeezing, because things like that reassure Wyatt. Flynn’s not sure if it’s the touch itself, or the silent reminder of Flynn’s dominance—Flynn’s assurance that he is in control and will make the decisions—or if it’s a combination.

Wyatt puts his plate down and takes a few gulps of water. Like Lucy, he’s ignoring the wine. Flynn feels almost like the wine is there as some kind of prescription pill in case whatever’s about to happen goes sideways.

Lucy doesn’t take deep breaths the way most people do. You don’t see her chest heave, or her cheeks puff out, her shoulders don’t move. It’s just in the way she parts her lips, and a slight dusting of pink appears on her cheeks.

“I thought, for a long time, that what… what I felt was unrequited,” she says, and Flynn can’t help his confusion because it sounds like she’s starting in the middle of a thought instead of the beginning. “I thought that I was the only one who wanted… both. But then I realized—I felt, and I saw, and I’ve been paying attention, and I just… do either of you realize what’s going on here?”

“What’s going on?” Wyatt echoes. He sounds lost.

Flynn is… still a bit lost, but lost in the sense that he knows where the road is, if he just keeps walking in the same direction.

“The way we live together.” Lucy shrugs, a bit helplessly. “The way we touch, and talk, the way we are.”

He can see the road now, can see the individual trees as well as the forest. His breathing comes up short.

“I love you.” It’s the beginning of the statement, but Flynn’s glad she flipped it into the middle, because he genuinely cannot feel his legs. He was looking at the wrong road—he thought she was going to say that this was too much, that they were treating her like a significant other and she didn’t want that. But this—this is—he’s—

“What?” Wyatt croaks. Thank God for Wyatt and his inability to shut up.

“I love you.” Lucy says it simply, like she’s announcing that gravity still works. “And I’m… I’m all but certain that you two love me. That you’re in love with me. I wasn’t, for a while. I was beating myself up. But the way we are together…” A trace of fear enters her eyes. “Unless I’m mistaken.”

Now that the cat is out of the bag, Flynn doesn’t see a reason to lie. Especially since Lucy looks like she’s starting to tremble, her eyes going a bit wide and darker than usual in that way they get when she’s feeling a strong emotion and trying to shove it down. And he has never lied to her. Not once. He told her the truth when they first met and he’s been doing it ever since and he won’t break that habit now. Not when she’s told him before that she relies on it.

“You’re not mistaken,” he says. His voice is so much slower and steadier than he feels inside. His heart has either stopped completely or is racing, possibly both at once. He’s not sure how it’s possible, and yet. And yet.

Wyatt makes a kind of betrayed choking noise, as if to say _we talked about this, idiot_ , and flails his hands in the air for a second. Then he looks at Flynn, the _go on, then,_ obvious if not audible.

Flynn makes sure he’s looking Lucy in the eye. God, this is not how he wanted to do this. Not that he—of course he wanted to do this. Wants to do this. But he thought it wasn’t—that she wouldn’t—and he’s no good for her anyway—

“I can’t even say when it started,” he admits, honest. “I felt… I wasn’t, it wasn’t, when you showed up in São Paulo. That was…” _That was you as my savior, you as an angel._ You can’t love an angel. Angels are meant to be admired and followed, not loved. Not like that. “I think it was when you yelled at me in the train station that I thought… oh boy, I’m in trouble. I didn’t know how bad it was until we were… until you collapsed and I carried you out of the Mothership. That was when—when I realized I was so fucking in love with you.”

Lucy’s breath catches—he sees it, sees it in how her throat moves, bobbing just a little, and her entire face goes pale and still.

He can’t feel his hands, or his face, really, actually. He licks his lips, an old nervous habit, trying to will some kind of sensation into his body. “I… yes. You’re right. I’m not sure… what else I can say, here. I love you.” He shrugs. “Until the city sinks into the sea, or something like that.”

Lucy looks at him for a long moment, a year, a second, he’s not sure, he just knows that he’s trapped in it, and part of him wants to keep professing his love until the end of days because now that it’s out in the open he doesn’t know how to stop. The other part of him wants to never speak again and also, possibly, shrivel away and turn into dust and die.

Lucy switches her gaze to Wyatt, and Flynn feels like he can breathe again, but also like the air is too thin.

“Since that fucker tried to drag you away,” Wyatt whispers. He avoids Rittenhouse’s name, but Flynn knows who he means, and so does Lucy. It’s written on her face. “That’s when I knew. I—fuck, if you need me to say it, yeah, I’ll say it, I love you.” He sounds weary, exhausted, defeated. “You don’t have to say it back. You don’t have to feel it, or anything, we didn’t… it’s not your job to carry our feelings.”

Flynn knows that’s basically word for word what Wyatt’s therapist told him but hey, if Wyatt needs a script still as he continues working out his shit, good for him. There’s a reason there’s a script.

Lucy’s eyes are shining and—oh, oh no.

Flynn’s up and out of his seat, his legs finally getting feeling in them again, and he circles around to Lucy to hug her. “ _Moja draga_ ,” he says, and there’s no point in holding back endearments now. She knows. “Lucy, _Lucy_ , we’re sorry, it’s okay—”

“Don’t you dare apologize.” Lucy’s voice is muffled, since she’s pressing her face into his shirt. “Unless it’s apologizing for not telling me and for being such foolish brick-headed thick-skulled _idiots_ —”

Wyatt gives Flynn an alarmed look. Flynn just shrugs. He doesn’t have an answer for this, either.

Lucy finally detaches herself, somewhat composed again. “I—I’m not made of glass. I’m not going to die of melancholy like some tragic Gothic heroine. Your love isn’t a weight, it’s not a burden.”

“But you…” Wyatt looks like he knows he’s running headlong into a brick wall but he also looks like he’s forgotten where the brakes are. “You don’t want us that way, do you? And you were—you’re going through all this… this shit…”

“Yes, Wyatt, I was erased from existence,” Lucy snaps. “Everything I knew about my family was a lie. I had to start over. It happens.”

“Does it?” Flynn can’t resist the remark.

Lucy pokes him in the chest. “It does. People lose their families. They lose their homes. War, natural disaster, amnesia, fucking uprooting themselves and going somewhere entirely new because of a toxic situation. Transitioning to the gender that feels right for them. Going into the witness protection program. People have to become… become new, all the time. Maybe the way it happened to me was unique but—but you two have had to do the same thing and I won’t have you using what happened to me as an excuse anymore. I won’t. I’m not going to break on you!”

Her voice is reaching a near-hysterical pitch, and she seems to realize it, because she stops, takes a few deep breaths, centers herself.

They’ve all had to get better at that—centering themselves. Because God knows, the world isn’t going to do it for them. The world spun out of orbit long ago.

“If you two don’t love me, then that’s fine.” Lucy looks up, looks both of them in the eye in turn. “But if what’s holding you back is some… some misguided notion that I don’t return your feelings or you don’t deserve this or I’m too delicate, then with all… with all honesty, fuck you.

“We’re already together. We live together, we eat together, we hang out every spare moment together. You help me with my homework, Flynn makes meals, we wake up and go to bed at the same times. We’re just not saying it. And I want to say it, I want to actually give this a chance.”

There’s a _but_ in there somewhere, the other option, the _if we don’t_ , but Lucy isn’t saying it out loud. That’s a good thing, because Flynn might die if she does. He doesn’t want to consider it—consider losing Lucy. Either of them.

“So.” Lucy takes another deep breath. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to shit or get off the pot. Because I am done, I am… I am so done with not taking what I want. And what I want is the both of you.”

Flynn inhales sharply as she reaches out, one hand to each of them. An offering. It’s something so simple, and yet so monumental, to reach back, to take her hand. He’s touched her in arguably more intimate ways. He’s carried her, cradled her to his chest while she was unconscious. He’s tucked a blanket over her when she’s fallen asleep on her bed in the middle of the detritus of her homework. He’s hugged her as tightly as he can while she cries. But this, somehow, is so much more than that. There is an intent behind it, a deliberate air to it, that lurks underneath, makes it so much more.

He watches as Wyatt takes Lucy’s other hand. Wyatt’s face is flushed, his hand shaking. Lucy squeezes it, already knowing how to reassure him.

“What do we do now?” Wyatt asks. He sounds scared and hopeful and young.

“What we’ve been doing,” Lucy replies. She squeezes Flynn’s hand, too, and Flynn’s breath hitches in his throat. “But we get a king-sized bed, so there’s room for all three of us. And we touch each other however we want. And we don’t hold back anymore.”

She looks at Flynn, waiting for him to back her up on this, to help her show Wyatt the way. This is unprecedented, three of them instead of just the two, and Flynn understands that Wyatt is probably trying very hard not to spook right now.

He reaches out and takes Wyatt’s other hand. Grasps it firmly. “We don’t have to hide anything anymore,” he promises.

It’s like a prayer circle, a benediction, a handfasting, as they all squeeze and hold onto each other and when Flynn sips his wine afterwards he can’t help but think, _communion_.

 

* * *

 

They don’t sleep together right away.

Well they do. Sleep, that is. Oh yeah. They definitely do that. The first night Wyatt finds himself crowded in bed with Lucy in between him and Flynn, the three of them whispering to each other in the dark. Well, Lucy and Flynn do most of the whispering. Wyatt already suspects the sleeping arrangements will be haphazard, musical spot on the mattress, so to speak, but tonight Lucy needs it most. Needs them most.

They do kiss. They do a lot of that. Lucy’s mouth is sweet and lush, like strawberries. He can taste the wine on her tongue when she gets bolder and draws him down. He’s drunk on her kisses. On her hands on his face. On her. He remembers staring at her during the Alamo and the rest of the world vanishing, and maybe then it wasn’t quite romantic, it was more that she was his leader, a cornerstone, an anchor when he was dizzy and the world was spinning—but now it is decidedly more than that. He can’t stop looking away from her. He couldn’t even back then.

Flynn kisses him, too, steady and sure in that practiced way, because Flynn knows the ins and outs of him by now and can take Wyatt apart with a single touch if he wants to. He watches Lucy and Flynn kissing, too, and finds that he likes looking. They kiss like they’re starting a fire, and even their gentler kisses are like little sparks. It makes him lightheaded. He’s addicted.

That first night is a tangle of limbs and whispered confessions, and Wyatt doesn’t want to go to sleep, doesn’t want tomorrow to come, he just wants to stay like this, loving and being loved, holding and being held, forever. He feels like fucking Don Quixote except he actually did it, he got the impossible dream, reached the unreachable star, and his blood is singing.

Of course, tomorrow does come, but that’s okay, he realizes when he opens his eyes to find his forehead pressed to Flynn’s and Lucy’s hair in his mouth, their arms and legs all intertwined and layered on top of each other. He has tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

This is his _life_ now.

It takes them a few more days to get situated. They rearrange the bedrooms, buy a king-sized bed and sell the unused one. Flynn and Wyatt’s room becomes the guest-bedroom-slash-office for Lucy’s studying-slash-library for their ever-growing book collection. Lucy’s bedroom becomes the bedroom, their bedroom, and if Wyatt cries a little in the shower about it, well, nobody has to know.

And Lucy has a point—they really have been acting like a couple (threesome? throuple?) this entire time. It’s just that now Lucy will ruffle his hair and kiss him on the cheek, and Flynn will kiss Lucy’s knuckles and call her all sorts of endearments in a half a dozen languages as Lucy blushes, and Lucy will kiss Flynn as a thank-you for coffee, or as a hello, or just about any other time.

Now, the empty pieces have been filled.

It’s only once they’ve settled in properly that they all seem to get that switch flipped. Wyatt and Flynn have, of course, been fucking regularly for a couple months now, but they went on hiatus when Lucy joined the equation, and now…

Now it’s like the adrenaline’s worn out and he’s realizing that oh yeah, he’s injured and should do something about the pain in his side. Or something. Except this isn’t pain, it’s anticipation, it’s freaking out just a little bit with how much he yearns, and aches, and _wants_.

Lucky for him, Lucy and Flynn also yearn, and ache, and want.

It moves gradually. Like they’re all teenagers again, exploring and figuring it all out as they go, what feels good and what they want and how the actual logistics work.

Lucy climbs into Flynn’s lap while they’re watching a movie they’ve all seen before, and she kisses him. Little pecks up his neck, and then around his mouth, until Flynn’s hands are shaking where they dig into the couch and Lucy finally kisses him properly and Wyatt watches them for ages, so goddamn hard he keeps expecting to pass out.

Flynn slides between his legs as Wyatt turns away from washing the dishes, kissing him, and Lucy murmurs _I want to watch_ as they rut against each other and he comes with a babbled _oh Jesus fuck_.

He wakes up in the morning with Lucy nuzzling him and kisses her before he can think better of it and stop himself, and Lucy kisses back, and his fingers are just sliding into her when Flynn enters from the bathroom and tells them with a smirk not to stop on his account and Lucy grabs onto Wyatt and stares at Flynn as she gasps and shakes and spills over.

They haven’t done all three, though. And they haven’t hit any home runs yet, so to speak. And Wyatt wants to. He wants to be in Lucy, wants Flynn in him, wants to be in the middle, on top, under, and he’s just about ready to beg for it.

The dam bursts on a Friday night.

Flynn’s putting groceries away while Wyatt reads the latest Dean Koontz and Lucy is diligently working on a massive puzzle at the coffee table. It’s comfortable, it’s like it always has been, except better because Lucy’s sitting on the floor between Wyatt’s legs and every so often will rest her head on his knee or stroke his ankle, and Flynn is humming quietly in the kitchen, which he never did before they added Lucy to the equation and became whole.

Flynn finishes and walks over, and Lucy sets aside the puzzle pieces she’s been weighing in her palm.

She doesn’t say anything. She just looks up at Flynn, eyeing him, and Wyatt shivers in response to that look. He’s not even the recipient of it and the hot fire in Lucy’s gaze licks up his spine.

Flynn goes completely still.

Lucy stands up, then turns and offers her hand out to Wyatt. Wyatt takes it, still a bit confused, but trusting. Lucy looks back at Flynn.

Flynn steps back, making a sweeping gesture with his arm like she’s a lady and he’s her knight, and Lucy walks past him, tugging Wyatt along with her, Flynn following.

Wyatt doesn’t even know how he knows, how he realizes, he just all of a sudden knows where this is going like he’s always known it all along, he just forgot somehow, for a brief moment.

They don’t bother closing the bedroom door behind them. Why would they? It’s their home. Nobody else is in it.

Lucy doesn’t release Wyatt’s hand when they get there. She just tugs him in and kisses him, slick and slow, but purposeful. She’s got a plan, their Lucy, she’s always got a plan. She’s their leader, after all.

And Wyatt—Wyatt will always follow.

Lucy rubs up against him, her hand getting down between them and squeezing his cock—he’s already starting to get hard but yeah, that’s brought him all the way, and he knows the tent in his sweatpants has to be embarrassing.

Flynn doesn’t seem to think so, if the way he softly swears is anything to go by. Lucy pulls off Wyatt’s lips with an obscene, wet _pop_ , and he turns to look. Flynn’s face is flushed, his eyes black, not a trace of green left in them, and a glance down confirms he’s in no better shape than Wyatt is.

If Wyatt was in any doubt that they were really doing this, it would be washed away now.

“I want him to fuck me,” Lucy announces to Flynn, like they’re discussing what they’d like for dinner. She softly pets Wyatt’s throat, a soft spot of his, and Wyatt only narrowly avoids sinking to the floor. He locks his knees just in time, but he is so very aware of the pads of Lucy’s fingers against the hollow in his neck, against his fluttering pulse. “But I don’t think we’re quite ready yet.”

“Oh?” Flynn’s tone is teasing and subservient at the same time, which sounds impossible but of course Flynn is the kind of person who can make such contradictions work, make them manifest. Flynn himself is a contradiction.

Lucy nods in mock seriousness. “Oh, yes.” Her hand tightens, wraps around Wyatt’s throat properly, her thumb tilting his chin up from the underside.

His cock pulses and jumps and he thinks he’s in real danger of dying.

“So.” Lucy’s tone is still light, almost mocking if not for the fondness in the edges of it. “I was thinking you could eat me out, get me nice and ready, and then you could fuck him and get him all nice and ready. Does that sound all right to you?”

“Fuck.” Flynn draws a hand across his mouth. “Lucy, you can’t just—”

“Say things like that? Of course I can.” She squeezes Wyatt’s throat just the once and then pulls away, walking over to the bed. She sits down, spreading her legs, and Flynn makes a helpless starving noise, half keen, half moan. “Come on, then. Be good for me.”

Wyatt wants to know where the fuck this confidence came from. Not that he’s objecting to it. But he is not in any way shape or form prepared to deal with this Lucy, this Lucy who orders them around like it’s nothing and makes his blood so damn hot he’s in danger of heatstroke.

Flynn moves like he’s in a trance, walking over and getting to his knees in one swift movement, like he’s practiced. He starts to pull down Lucy’s pants, but Lucy places a hand in his hair, stilling him.

“Wyatt,” she orders, and Wyatt scrambles to obey before she even finishes speaking, hurrying over to join.

He takes off her shirt and bra while Flynn makes short work of everything the waist down, until Lucy’s guiding him into a kiss and Flynn can lick his way into her unobstructed. Lucy like this is a vision, something at once otherworldly and painfully earthly, a goddess of nature, soil in her blood and the cycle of the seasons in the roll of her hips. She’s not particularly loud, but Wyatt drinks up her surprised little gasps as she holds him in place by the hair, sucking on his tongue just as Flynn sucks on her clit. Flynn is no slouch in the bedroom department. Wyatt can attest to that. But it’s still a miniature revelation to watch him dance his tongue through Lucy’s folds, flutter it against her, add his fingers only once Lucy’s shaking in Wyatt’s arms.

Wyatt’s lips are completely bitten red and Flynn’s hand is soaked all the way to his wrist by the time he lets Lucy come. It’s that same duality, following her orders but keeping her on edge, and Wyatt is absolutely drunk on watching the whole thing play out. Lucy claws at the both of them as she inhales sharply and orgasms, her legs shaking.

He wants to see her come like that again, wants Flynn and Lucy teach him how to make her come like that.

Flynn wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand and lets himself be led up, the three of them tugging at clothes until they’re all a tangle of naked limbs, laughing and kissing and it’s pure delight, and Wyatt had forgotten that sex could be like this. With Jess—at first it was, but then that faded, and sex became a duty, almost, it had to be serious, it was a way to prove that they still belonged together. And then with Flynn it was secret, it was shameful, it was sinfully good but it was still sin—and once he gave in it became comfort and warmth and clinging in the dark.

This is goofing off, this is accidentally smacking heads and poking each other with their elbows, this is messy and absolutely glorious.

Wyatt finds himself over Lucy, his hands on either side of her head as she spreads her legs, cooing at him and coaxing him along as Flynn kisses Wyatt’s mouth, his neck, his shoulder, two of his fingers twisting deep inside and Wyatt is practically sobbing with how much he wants to let go. Lucy’s praising him, calling him their good boy, and Flynn is pressed against him and inside him every which way, and Wyatt is laughing a little even as he moans because it feels so damn good and he feels so damn good and he feels so damn free. Falling without a parachute.

“Do you want him to fuck you?” Lucy asks. “You can’t come, you’re not allowed to until you fuck me.”

“I won’t.” He wants Flynn inside of him like he wants oxygen—in that it’s not so much a want as something he has to have or he’ll die. “I promise,” he adds, off Lucy’s skeptical look.

“If you come, I’ll have to punish you,” she warns him.

“Is that a pro—oh _fuck_.” His smart remark is merged with a curse as Flynn starts to enter him and Wyatt might actually be in danger of being punished after all.

They both whine helplessly as it starts, and Wyatt has to squeeze the base of his cock a few times to hold himself off, but he’s good, he’s good, he doesn’t give in, not even when Flynn loses all control and uses him and just fucks in as slick and as hard and fast as he can. Not even when Flynn comes and it feels hot and dirty and Wyatt doesn’t feel a single goddamn lick of shame.

He’s not sure he’s ever held out this long before. Jess suggested a few less-vanilla things in the bedroom but he’d been the definition of repressed and had shut most of those ideas down, even if now he can admit he doesn’t like being in charge and if Jess had tied him up a few times maybe there marriage would’ve been better.

If he’d done a lot of things different, let Jess do a lot of things, their marriage would’ve been better.

But he’s here, now, and he’s so goddamn in love he’s kind of fucking glad that things with Jess fell apart, because the man he loves more than anything just fucked him while murmuring endearments and is now helping him to fuck the woman he loves more than anything as she wraps her legs around him and calls him _good_ and _cute_ and _sweetheart_ and he never wants to be anywhere else ever again.

He comes before Lucy does, but he’s not going to be the lazy one, he refuses, and he slides his fingers in between and rubs at her clit until she seizes up around his oversensitive cock and then slumps against the bed, against him, against Flynn, coming with a sigh.

Wyatt might have come with a shout but he’s going to deny it until the day he dies. Besides, who can blame him if he did shout? He’s almost certain he had a fucking out-of-body experience towards the end there.

For a few minutes it’s just loving silence, the three of them idly stroking each other, a tangle of limbs, ignoring the sweat and the stink as they press as close together as they possibly can.

Until at last Lucy says, “One of you is going to have to carry me to the shower,” and Flynn snorts and kisses her, and Wyatt starts laughing until tears leak out, and oh God, this is the first day of the rest of his life, isn’t it? This is just the beginning.

Knowing that fact is the most amazing feeling in the world.


	14. Chapter 14

_Epilogue_

Lucy subtly—or tries to subtly—adjust her gown as she stands in line with the others. This isn’t the first time she’s done this. And, most likely, it won’t be the last. But this time feels special nonetheless.

When she first got her undergraduate degree, Mom was here. Dad was here. Amy was here. So were a few other friends—but mostly her friends were in line with her, graduating as well. Her family had cheered, and she’s felt like she’d lost ten pounds just from sweating so much, and she’d been a bit hungover from partying the night before, and the whole thing had been both awkward and wonderful.

This time, she has an entire damn cheerleading squad in the audience.

Wyatt and Flynn are there, of course. The ring on her finger feels a little heavier, like it wants to remind her of its presence. It isn’t legal, of course. Even California isn’t quite that progressive yet. But that doesn’t matter. What mattered was the things they’d said to each other on the day, hands joined like that first time over the coffee table in the living room. What mattered was Flynn waking them up with whispered words and that single question, kisses pressed to the corners of their mouths. What mattered was getting to see the rings on Wyatt and Flynn’s fingers and feel an identical one on hers.

Denise’s there, along with Michelle and the kids. Jiya and Rufus made a big obnoxious banner with glitter and everything, because of course they did. Emma is the only one, besides Denise, who looks at all dignified. Jess flew in on a red eye last night and is now hopped up on caffeine and fidgeting in her seat. Mason isn’t in the audience, because he was shanghaied into delivering a speech as a part of the ceremony and has sworn bloody vengeance on Lucy for letting slip to her dean that she knows Connor Mason, billionaire industrialist.

Lucy wants to wave at them all but keeps her hands down. She knows they can see her. Wyatt looks like a puppy that’s waiting for his owner to open the door so he can jump all over her, and Flynn just looks unbearably proud.

She tried to tell them this isn’t the biggest deal. She had to relearn history, sure. So much of it has changed. But she’s gotten her B.A. before, and she’s going to get her masters again, somewhere—after a break, though. Mason’s footing the bill for her, Flynn, and Wyatt to take a year off and do some proper traveling. Just the three of them.

There will be her masters, eventually, though. Not in Stanford. Maybe Oxford, or Cambridge, or somewhere else, somewhere new. And kids. They all want kids. California lets up to four people be named as parents on a birth certificate, to accommodate same-sex couples who used surrogates, or couples who got divorced and then remarried other people, and so on. So they can get a kid here. Lucy’s thinking two. Wyatt wants a dog. They want to move out of their apartment—beloved to them all as it is—and get a proper house with room for their plans.

There’s going to be so much more.

The dean begins calling students up, and Lucy claps appropriately and politely. She’s friends with some of them, despite the age difference, and she’s proud of all of them. She knows this isn’t easy, any of it. She can’t wait to see their faces when Mason announces he’s paid off all their student loans.

Rufus might have strong-armed Mason into that. Rufus is very into making Mason a “class traitor,” as Jiya calls it.

Her stomach knots with unexpected nerves. She already got her diploma, technically, already earned it, but she’s on edge anyway as it gets closer and closer to her turn.

Four years ago, she didn’t think she’d have this. She didn’t think she’d have anything. Her entire life had been yanked away from her, and she’d felt alone, completely apart from the rest of the world. From even the people she loved most.

But now—now she has a whole new family. And she will never, can never forget Amy. She can’t forget Mom, as fraught as their relationship could be. And she won’t forget Dad, even if in this timeline he met someone else, had another family, was another person. She will never, ever forget. She has a journal of her own. And one day, someday, the world will be ready to read it. To know what happened, to know that the impossible was, is, in fact possible. That it is a thing that will possibly be a reality again someday.

She will never forget. But that doesn’t mean she can’t move forward. And she has, oh, she has, and she’s in love, and she is loved, and she has friends and she has the wide, wide void out in front of her—a void of light, of color, of possibility.

“Lucy Preston!”

Her name is called, and she walks up on stage, is hit by the dazzling, warm lights, and manages not to trip and fall as she accepts her diploma (she is not, thankfully, hungover this time). There are camera flashes, and she hears Jess, Jiya, and Rufus whooping annoyingly. It takes a great deal of self-restraint not to flip them off as she heads off stage.

And now—Flynn, and Wyatt, hugging her, pressing kisses into her hair, so proud of her, and she holds onto them and knows that she is on solid, solid, solid ground.


End file.
